


The Sea Like the Stars

by DragonWarden



Series: The Sea Like the Stars [1]
Category: Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-03-28
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 08:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 29,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonWarden/pseuds/DragonWarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In one story, a program named Rinzler remembered he was once named Tron long enough to ram his lightjet into Clu's.</p><p>In one story, he fell, and Clu went on to harry the users and the ISO upon the I/O port's very threshold.</p><p>In one story, he drifted into the deeps of the Sea of Simulation, limp and flickering, as Kevin Flynn drew Clu into himself and Sam and Quorra escaped into the user's world.</p><p>This is not that story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Another End, Another Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This story will most likely be prone to fits of idleness. I'm afraid RL is pretty demanding, and the time and inspiration I have for random bites of the writing bug are few and far-flung, but this idea wouldn't let me go and so I'm going to take a shot at unreeling all the words from my head onto actual paper.

"I FIGHT FOR THE USERS."

In one story, a program named Rinzler remembered he was once named Tron for the microseconds necessary to ram his lightjet into Clu's.

In one story, he fell, and Clu went on to harry the users and the iso upon the I/O port's very threshold.

In one story, he drifted into the deeps of the Sea of Simulation, limp and flickering, as Kevin Flynn drew Clu into himself and Sam and Quorra escaped into the user's world.

This is not that story.

* * *

They were in the port. They were standing _in the port_ , and the light from it cast the perpetual dark of the Grid into a near-blinding brightness, until the figures beyond were little more than ghostly shapes, and yet ... and yet -

"I'm not leaving you!" Sam screamed, voice strangled from more than just simple adrenaline, brushing clumsily at the hands restraining him. _This can't be happening, we're right here, we're so close, you can't give up now Dad ..._

"Goodbye, Kiddo."

Sam wanted to take the disc Quorra handed him and smash it into that gently smiling face, make his father realize that just because he got to say goodbye this time does not make a second abandonment easier or _right_. And when that doppelganger straightened between them, his father's face from that _first_ abandonment hovering just before him, Sam almost _did_ hurl the disc. Except Quorra's pleading clench upon his arm made him recall, just in time, that it was exactly what Clu wanted, and with teeth gritted to cage back a sob of frustration, he started to raise his arms ...

... and, suddenly, improbably, saw his father, his _real_ father, abruptly flying through the air, right over Clu's form in an arc which ended in a skidding stop at the edge of the port.

Kevin Flynn rolled onto his back with a groan, blinking up at them with a bemused grimace. Clu, Sam, and Quorra likewise gazed down at him in equal confusion.

"What - " Sam's tongue came unglued first. But, as if it had been a signal, everybody was suddenly in motion - Clu lurching forward with a snarl, Kevin belatedly scrambling to get back on his feet, Quorra reaching for Kevin's sleeve, and some remote and thus far ignored corner of Sam's mind registering a strange stuttering _growl_ rapidly approaching -

\- just before something slammed into Clu's back, sending the program sliding in a snarling, tangled black mass directly for them.

"Dad, come on!" Sam snatched for his father's other arm as Quorra finally latched onto the older Flynn's elbow, the both of them hauling him backwards.

Kevin's feet kicked at the floor, looking oddly as if he was trying to push _away_ from them instead, and Sam felt something cold clench tight around his middle when his father managed to half-twist out of his grasp and confirmed it with a gasped, "No, wait - ! I don't belong outside anymore, I have to stop Clu, I have to help - stop, please, that's _Tron_!"

Sam felt his insides clench just a little bit tighter, squeezing all the breath from him.

Tron. Tron, who, in the real world, had littered his childhood room with heroic poses and comforting night-lights. Tron, who, in the virtual world, had threatened and terrorized him and his father and countless other programs. Tron, who, in what Sam had thought would be his last moments, staring across empty air at a gleaming black helmet flanked by lightjet canons, had seemingly switched sides at the critical moment and slammed into Clu before the program could deliver the killing blow, buying them precious time to reach the tower.

Tron, who now clawed and fought and ripped at Clu just a few feet away, that distinctive click-growl all but drowned by the program's howls as Clu fought back with a look as if he would drag himself closer by his _teeth_ if he had to. _"Flynn!"_ Clu screamed, and where was Rinzler's - _Tron's_ \- vaunted prowess now as the helmet was snapped back by an elbow and the black tangle of limbs finally came apart, and oh god there was only ten feet between them now ... eight feet ... four ...

"Quorra!" Sam shouted, unable to tear his eyes away from that now-terrifying specter of his father's face from twenty years past, and he had to have faith that the Iso understood and was hauling Kevin back even as he thrust the disc high above his head because they were _leaving right now_ -

 _"No!"_

It might have been his father's voice and a stray echo, or it might have been the same voice from two sources. Sam's vision whited out before he could decipher it, and only felt the muffled impact of bodies next to him before all other sensations were snatched away as well.


	2. Forever Young

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: I only watched the movie once. I'm terrible at remembering dialogue or how characters talk. I'm terrible at remembering layouts, details, etc - basically, everything. So, I apologize for any inaccuracies, but whatever I don't remember, I'm just going to be making up whole cloth.

It was complete and utter chaos.

It was now crawling well past two decades ( _or 6.48x10^11 milliseconds or x10^14 nanoseconds or - but who really wanted to keep count anymore_?) before Kevin Flynn last stepped on this side of the monitor ... and from what he could gather, reality couldn't _wait_ to shove that fact down his throat with every single breath he took.

The hip on which he had landed on ached ferociously.

Dust caught in the back of his windpipe and flew up his nose, making it itch mercilessly.

A hand with someone's full weight behind it mashed unexpectedly against his mouth, and underneath the discomfort, he tasted salt-sweat and the iron tang of a cut lip.

And above all else, the noise of pandemonium.

"What the hell - "

"Ouch! Sam, your elbow - "

 _"Rinzler!"_

It was hard to say at first what chilled him more quickly; if it was an all too familiar voice that had turned against him, or the once familiar whine of a laser's capacitor banks cycling. Or, perhaps, it was the frightening realization that the two sounds were now overlayed as they should never have been, and that the former had lost its peculiar on-Grid resonance, retaining only the heat and snap of a lifetime's worth of anguish and hatred.

"Sam," he groaned, squinting through a blurring haze which refused to disperse no matter how often he blinked or tried to _will_ it away, forgetting all too quickly that real world physics was not as receptive to human suggestion as the system environment. "Sam, what have you done - "

"Wh-what've _I_ done?!" an outraged sputter came from just above his head as too many hands tried to help him up all at once. "Okay, _look_ , Dad, if you hadn't gone all Alamo there and tried to make some crazy last stand - "

Kevin fought the urge to groan again as he finally found his feet. It seemed two decades had made him not only rusty in body, but feeble in his parenting skills as well. "That's not what I meant - "

Quorra's sharp warning came only a split-second before he caught a glimpse of his younger self in the corner of his vision. He barely had enough time to begin lurching backwards out of sheer reflex before a supple, black-clad arm abruptly interceded. There was a blur of motion that his age-clouded eyes could not possibly follow and then a horrible crash, and even as he was being pulled off balance yet again by well-meaning tugs, another misplaced sound was filling the room ... Rinzler's ticking rumble; oddly flat, but wholly unmistakable.

He froze. Quorra, Sam, himself, Clu, _and_ Rinzler? No, _Tron._ They were _all_ here, in the users' world, the _real_ world _?_ In fact, the latter two had apparently continued their struggle right through the transition with barely a pause for breath - furniture screeching in protest, equipment shattering - and what he had originally thought was an attack directed toward him he only belatedly realized was Clu trying to make a run for it before Tron intercepted him. But the tables turned abruptly as Rinzler's growl stuttered when a blow snapped him backwards into a shelf - discs and books raining down - and Clu followed with a vengeful mask which Kevin had rarely seen turned on anyone but himself. "You _dare_ \- !" his doppelganger hissed, pinning the helmeted figure with a forearm across the throat, other arm reaching back for a program's most personal weapon.

Kevin felt as if he was the one being strangled instead, though it was Rinzler/Tron straining weakly against the hold. This was becoming a sort of private hell, a nightmare scene stuck in an endless loop, helplessly watching one of his best friends fight for his life - for _both_ their lives - against Kevin's own creation.

And losing.

"Dad - _Dad!_ The laser - it's finished charging, what do we do, how do we send them back - "

Send them back?

"Kevin Flynn?" Quorra squeaked when his grip tightened unconsciously on her bracing forearm.

Abandon Tron again?

"Dad!"

"No ... " he husked as, whether it was fully functional in the real world or not, Clu was able to detach _something_ from his back to raise high over his head in a pose which struck ice through his very core. _"No!"_ he cried, moving without thought, unable to bear the thought of that disc falling once more upon his friend and hurling himself straight at the program in a full-body tackle.

"Oh Jesus are you _insane_ \- ?!"

Kevin could spare only a nanosecond's - no, split-second, here - thought for chagrin at his son's accusation, and then another one for pride - _chip off the ol' block there -_ when Sam then flung himself into the fray with that crazed warcry of his with nary another thought _._ Clu folded beneath their combined weights with a surprised grunt, and while Kevin - holding no illusions about his fitness for combat off-Grid - simply tried to sprawl as awkwardly over the program's torso as possible, his son concentrated on trying to wrestle the disc from Clu's grasp.

"Ow - !" Sam squawked, snatching back his hand with eyes wide and incredulous. Kevin's head jerked up, trying to see what was wrong, before Clu took advantage of their inattention to buck with startling strength, nearly unseating the both of them altogether. "Crap - Quorra!" Sam called breathlessly, flinging himself nearly atop Kevin as well in his haste to pin the rogue program again, except he hardly needed to remind the ISO - the program was already standing over them like the proverbial dark angel, her pale face a forbidding mask of deadly focus, weapon of choice raised high over her head ... only, it was no longer a lightblade which extended from the elegant hilt, but a slender dark thing that looked like it had an all too keen edge, and Kevin suddenly realized with stuttering heart that she was about to _kill_ Clu -

 _"Quorra, no!"_

In hindsight, he might rationalize that he was trying to prevent the last example of a digital life form from committing accidental murder. But truthfully, at that moment, all he wanted was for everything to just - to just _pause_ , and give him a chance to _think_ , because he has had twenty-one years of real time and who knows how many trillions of cycles virtual time to consider all the ways that things could conclude on the _Grid_ , but he never once - _never once_ \- considered how things might end in the real world instead. Things kept _happening_ , and he was frightfully aware that there was no undo command here -

"User ... "

It seemed little more than a whisper. Yet it was so out of place, so strange, that it unerringly drew all their attentions; four pairs of eyes rising to the dark figure half-slumped against the wrecked shelving, and then an oh-so-subtle tilt of the helmet toward the laser whose cerulean blue light seemed to gather and swell at the mouth ...

"Sam - Quorra - !" Kevin gasped as realization struck, grasping uselessly at words in his desperation as he scrabbled to his feet, all else forgotten in his haste. _Why is everything so_ slow _; can't talk, can't move, can't_ think _fast enough_ ... "Stop it ... the laser! The rest of them - !"

Thank goodness the universe had seen fit to grant him with bright children; brighter than he knew what to do with sometimes. Sam and Quorra did not need further explanations, though their methods of resolution varied dramatically.

Sam raked his gaze over the laser and immediately dove for the power cables leading to the wall.

Quorra raked her gaze over the room and picked up the nearest chair.

Just as Sam braced his foot and put his shoulders behind a yank which sheered brittle cable sheathes and yanked corroded plugs from their sockets, Quorra brought the seat down in a fearsome overhand swing upon the center of the laser's barrel.

Kevin flinched at the ferocious _crunch_ which resulted and Sam stared at the shattered bits of metal which rained down to the ground, cables still dangling from his hands. "Uhm ... " the young man finally ventured before trailing off helplessly, speechless.

Kevin could feel a little knot of dread replacing the panic in his bemusement. True, there would now be know realistic equivalent of a hovering dreadnought trying to manifest in the real world, but the laser itself ...

 _"Flynn ... "_

The whisper was even weaker than before. Kevin turned - _so slow, too slow_ \- and registered only an all-black silhouette slipping clumsily between him and the enraged visage of Clu before -

 _Crack!_

Rinzler's black helmet snapped back with the force of the program's blow, bits of shattered plastic flying away.

"Tron!" Kevin choked, barely putting his arms out in time to catch the slumping figure, taking it in a controlled fall to the ground as his balance failed.

" ... should have derezzed you from the beginning! Don't think this is over, Flynn!" Clu snarled, expression wild, and this time, there was no one close enough to stop him as he dashed for the stairs, though Quorra did not hesitate to tear after him. Then, with a frustrated, "Hey!" Sam was pelting after her in turn.

Kevin ... Kevin only had eyes for the body sprawled awkwardly against him, transfixed by the glimpse of a face beneath the cracked and broken helmet.

A single dark brown eye stared back blindly, half-lidded and blank with shock. A small cut over the visible brow was beaded with crimson droplets, gathering into a thin line which began wending down over the temple. Though anything below one angular cheek was still hidden in shadow and tinted polymer, he could hear the desperate gasps for air from within and feel the shuddering breaths in the chest leaning against him.

"Tron ... Tron, buddy ... " he whispered helplessly, his hands - the Creator's hands no longer - hovering uselessly over the fractured helmet, wondering what in the world he was supposed to do ...

"Wait - just, just hold on a moment, give me a moment to explain - don't go down there - !" Sam's voice abruptly drifted back, accompanied by a clumsy slew of footfalls coming down the stairs. Kevin lifted his head with dazed relief, mouth opening on some vague notion of asking for his son's help, his son who knew far more about the real world than he did now ...

"What the devil is going on here?!"

... and felt his voice stick in his throat as his gaze met, instead, the face of Tron's, aged twenty-one years - that of Alan Bradley.


	3. The Old and the New

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Sorry, the chapters will probably remain short for a while! I just don't have the time between work and another writing project to make this go any faster. I'm also jumping quite a bit between POVs and action in these first few chapters, but everyone will get a chance to catch their breath soon; promise. =)

"Hello? Sam?"

When he had passed on the pager's message, Alan had thought to give Sam some time to explore on his own, first. After all, the arcade must have been as cluttered with memories as dust and cobwebs for the young man ... they were certainly thick enough to choke _him_ right now, as he ventured through the unlocked entrance and closed the door gently behind him.

As well meaning as his gesture had been, though, he had not been about to let his godson simply wander off alone to explore an abandoned building after receiving a cryptic page from a disconnected number. Heavens knew that Sam had never needed help to find trouble, and so here Alan was, following the breadcrumb trail of Sam's passage in the middle of the night; led on by the Ducati parked in front and the festive jingles and blistering lights now filling the seemingly empty arcade.

For all the aural and visual pollution, though, he had yet to see any other evidence of a human presence.

"Sam, it's Alan!" he called again, feeling a little foolish doing so, but finding it less disconcerting to pretend that Sam was merely confused or being obstinate than unable to respond. Besides, who could really hear anything clearly over all the ruckus of the games and jukebox going at full volume? Had it always been this loud, back when Flynn's Arcade had been their second home? Surely speakers only degraded with time, instead of becoming more piercing ... _or,_ he had to admit ruefully, _I'm just old now_. Looking around with a tight feeling in his chest, he had to admit that nothing else could have changed within the arcade except for himself.

 _Kevin, what happened to you? You've missed out on so many things ..._ we've _missed you ..._

But, thankfully, he was not forced to linger on the whens and wherefores as he heard the scrape of something heavy moving in the back. "Sam!" This time, the name was punctuated with equal parts irritation and relief as he gratefully stepped into the next aisle, striding rapidly toward the source. "Did you really have to turn everything on all at once? Can barely string two thoughts together in here ... "

... and was suddenly bowled head over teakettle by something - some _one_ \- that had seemed almost more animal than human, all sleek black limbs with odd yellow accents, tearing toward the entrance. While Alan wheezed and struggled to figure out whether it was the floor or the ceiling he was blinking at, there was a snarl and a knee dug painfully into his leg as whoever it was fought to disentangle themselves. "Hey, buddy, ease up a little, will you," he growled, or tried to. He wasn't too proud to admit that it came out more as a croak, particularly when there was half a grown man's weight flopped across his diaphragm.

 _"You."_

Belatedly, concern began to crawl up his abused spine. Black clothing - neon stripes notwithstanding - a stranger who didn't belong, running for the exit, and still no Sam in sight? Wasn't this hinting at the very scenario that he had hoped to avert? Except even caution had to take a backseat to simple incomprehension as his partner in collision finally levered himself up enough that they came face to face - and even with his glasses askew, Alan saw enough to make his whole body go numb.

It was like looking into the visage of a ghost. A ghost from twenty-one years ago, except ... except that Alan had never seen his friend so wild, so vengeful, even when he had voiced his frustrations over Dillinger's underhanded tactics.

 _"Why are you always in my way?!"_

But that bitterness was familiar, if heavier than he had ever heard it, and Alan just couldn't manage to kick himself out of his simple gape as the specter raised an arm back with something clenched in his fist ...

"Quorra!"

Alan tilted his head back sharply at the - _finally_ \- sound of his godson's voice, and even shock could not quite hold back a small stab of relief upon seeing Sam. Except, there was someone else in between them, wearing the same black on black as his attacker but with strips of icy blue and a pale, pale face, and they were sprinting full-tilt down the aisle _. An accomplice?_ "Sam, go!" was all he managed to bark out as he braced himself, reflexively closing his eyes against a blow ... only to have the breath whoosh back into him as the pinning weight across his middle was abruptly removed.

There was a fierce sounding cry - a woman? - and the thud of bodies next to him as he tried to push his glasses back up his nose with a shaking hand and untangle his legs from the tail of his own coat. "Sam, get back!" he gasped as something clashed and sparks lit before a kick separated the two shadows.

"Alan? Oh jesus, what're you doing here - wait, wait, why're you - "

"Get back!" Alan growled, this time putting as much authority as he could muster into his voice as he finally regained his feet and took a hold of the young man's arm, bodily shoving him back the way he had come. The woman had something like a slender shortsword in hand while the man was clutching - was that some weird modern reconception of a frisbee? Except that it was solid enough to turn away her next strike with a shriek of metal, and when he swung at her she arched her back to dodge as if it constituted just as much of a threat as the blade which she retaliated with.

"No, I can't just leave Quorra - !"

"She looks like she can take care of herself, our job's to stay out of her way and call the police!" He knew it was the wrong tone to take - commanding, as if Sam were still seven years old and he played more of a role than just the occasional cliche dispenser - knew it even before he could feel the man tensing indignantly, but couldn't find it in him to care as adrenaline gave his aging bones that extra boost needed to temporarily overtake youthful strength. He would happily take the full brunt of Sam's rebellious angst later if they managed to get through this unscathed.

"You don't understand, Alan! Look, there's no time to explain, just let me get through to - hey, no, wait, you can't go down there - "

It was a strange and inexplicable turnaround, but Alan had not been the programmer he was and the senior board member he was now without knowing how to set a goal and reach it. With barely a thought, he used Sam's odd reluctance against him; letting his godson go so that he may push past and down the stairs, the young man now trailing after him instead, sputtering like a pot on the stove with a misaligned lid. "You have that fancy phone of yours on you, Sam? See if you get any reception down here and call emergency ... don't know if there will be a working land line, it looks like a storage basement ... " Strange enough that it was here at all. He racked his brain, but couldn't think of a single hint that this level should exist at all in all the years that he had visited the arcade.

"Wait - just, just hold on a moment, give me a moment to explain - don't go down there - !"

Alan paid little thought to why Sam was protesting so vehemently. There might have been the _slightest_ curl of unease at the base of his stomach just before he took that last step, but all in all, he had other concerns occupying his full attention and he could say in complete truthfulness that he was completely, absolutely, and utterly unprepared for what finally met his gaze in the hidden basement.

What looked to be a makeshift workspace, cluttered with years of references and work - ransacked.

What looked to be the prototype of his wife's old research project - half-shattered.

What looked to be yet one more of the strangely attired thieves or kidnappers or murderers or what-have-you stretched out upon the floor - unconscious? Dead?

And most baffling of all, what looked to be yet another incarnation of his best friend from two decades past, except this one was old like he should be, like Alan was, and instead of unreasoning fury, his eyes were filled with the weight of years and a burgeoning dread.

"What the devil is going on here?!"

* * *

All of his sensors were glitching. They were not _completely_ offline, because he was still receiving reports, feedback, data ... but they were all wrong, subtly skewed.

The air - _air_ , he was breathing _air_ , in the _users'_ world! - had been unbelievably cool and sweet when his helmet had broken; almost like liquid energy, only it had rasped in his throat even as his body had sipped greedily at it. Sounds were strange, both echoed and muffled, bouncing weirdly within the helmet's confines. The light ... the light was odd, dim but warm - not quite the yellow of Clu's circuits - and bright through that crack in the visor over his left eye.

Sensations were a weird mix of too sharp and not enough - there were minute prickles all over his skin whenever he moved, reports of the material he was clad in, unfamiliar and, thus, unignorable for the moment. But he no longer possessed that sixth sense of the immediate space around him, that indefinable knowledge of the system itself which helped him in combat, which helped him diagnose errors, or maybe it was just _different_ like everything else ... because when reflex made him flinch, he caught a glimpse of a shadow jerking back out of his peripheral vision, and a man's voice rumbled, _"Easy, easy there, Tron ... "_

Something lurched in his chest at the sound of that voice, the sound of that name. Kevin Flynn's voice was rough but still recognizable, and after a shamefully long moment's struggle to review the last few microcycles of memory, he belatedly realized that there had been voices around him for a while now; voices sharp and heated in discussion, accusation and strain and fear bouncing back and forth like a disc in an arena chamber.

 _" ... not going to just leave it at that are ... !"_

 _" ... course not! But look at ... "_

 _" ... want to. Creepy as hell, seeing ... "_

 _"Please, Alan, help him ... "_

Tron felt his breath catch again in his throat, even though the burning ache in his chest had long subsided by now. Alan? Dear user, it couldn't be ...

 _" ... crazy, Flynn, always with your harebrained - fine. Fine, all right, but don't think we're done with just that half-baked ... "_

No. No, Alan-one was here, seeing him like - he could not let his creator see him like this, it would be unbearable.

 _"Whoa, whoa, easy there, buddy! Hold on, Alan's just trying to help ... "_

 _"Tron - god, Flynn, you don't know how weird it is, calling him that - okay, Tron, just relax, all right? I hear you took a pretty nasty knock to the head, just let me take that helmet off to get a better look, all right?"_

The helmet? No, the helmet will not come off. The helmet was Rinzler, that was what Clu made him into, but it was also his shield, his mask - he could not show his face, others should not see him like this, and oh user, dear creator, especially not Alan-one ...

 _"Jesus - Tron! Stop!"_

He was panting even though the air had not gone hot and thick again, and he had to blink - was that liquid energy running from his eyes? Why was he leaking? - and those sounds, there were sounds coming from his throat ... high, soft, ragged. Broken.

 _"Is he ... ?"_

 _"Relax, Kevin, he's still conscious. He's just ... look, just don't let go yet, all right? In case he acts up again. He was pretty responsive there a moment ago, so I wouldn't worry about that knock too much, and it looks like his breathing's calmed. But ... christ, how did he get this thing on, anyway? Do you see any seams from your angle? It's like it was just molded right over his head."_

The laugh that came sounded so wrong that, for a moment, he thought it had been him; just another symptom of malfunction. But even more than his own fear and shame, the realization that it was Kevin Flynn who had made the sound had his gut clenching even tighter in on itself.

 _"How in the world am I supposed to know, man? I mean, does that laser know anything about fashion design? Look at the suit ... can't even find a damned zipper on the thing."_

 _"All right, all right, just give me a moment. You've got a toolbox around, right? Let me see if it's got anything that I can take that off with ... looks like we'll have to do this the hard way."_

Alan-one went away. Kevin Flynn sighed. And then a finger, dry and rough, brushed gently at the corner of his exposed eye, pulling away the moisture. He closed it - closed them both. Squeezed them shut and tried to will himself into suspension ... standby ... hibernation ... only to feel his chest fill with fresh, familiar despair when all the commands failed.

 _"Oh, Tron. I hope you can understand when I say how sorry I am."_


	4. Back in Kansas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some excitement, and then a lot of exposition. Afraid we're sailing into calmer waters now, so feel free to bring those tray tables down, but please keep those seatbealts fastened while seated, because who knows what we'll bump into along the way...
> 
> I also made some minor updates to wording in Chapter 3. Nothing major, but I'm OCD enough to want the edits.

How in the world had his life suddenly gotten so complicated?

It wasn't enough that Sam had discovered some sort of secret bat-cave his father had maintained for who knows how long doing who knows what, but then he had been sucked _directly_ into the "who knows what", and now suddenly ended up with more father figures than he knew what to do with -

 _" - here, you bit-bait!"_

\- and, oh yeah, who could forget the virtual megalomaniacal tyrant who was now a very _real_ megalomaniacal tyrant, along with the digital life form now trying to beat the crap out of him?

Sam had felt no shame in turning tail and running from the frozen tableau at the bottom of the basement steps. He could tell a losing proposition when he saw one, and unlike his dive off of Encom's roof, this one didn't promise quite as thrilling a ride before one hit the pavement (and most likely face-first, at that). Besides, there was now a very real battle taking place just above, and Sam wasn't about to let a woman - virtual or not - fight _all_ of his battles for him.

Even if she _could_ kick his butt.

Except that, hurdling the last few steps to emerge back on the main floor where the sounds of metal clashing and cried challenges were audible even over the background noise of the arcade, he was all too aware that he was planning on jumping in barehanded. His reappearance in the real world had been accompanied by the same clothes he had worn when he had disappeared, which meant no dock and no disc. Not that, even if he had retained it, the disc would have done him much good anyway - when he had tried to grab at Clu's weapon, the outer edge had been razor sharp, and his palm still stung from the shallow cut; most likely the gloves were what allowed Clu to keep all his fingers while handling that thing. So, depending on what was lost in translation, throwing one might not necessarily mean it ever came back either.

But then that begged the question of what exactly he could do as he skidded to a breathless stop just a few feet from the flurry of black limbs and weapons. Quorra was holding her own for the moment, but it was clear that Clu was not all that interested in maintaining the fight; the ISO had her hands full attempting to cut off his escape routes and keeping him engaged. Though, if past performance was any indication, all Sam needed to do was to provide a distraction and let Quorra do the rest; something which had worked well enough when they had gone up against Rinzler.

 _A distraction._ His eyes lit upon a dusty fire extinguisher strapped against the wall between two machines. The arcade had been stripped of all but its games and some of the larger pieces of furniture, but the emergency supplies required by federal and state code had remained, and now Sam quickly wrenched the tank from its setting.

The heft of the extinguisher was satisfying, but as he started circling around the fight, it was clear that he would not be using it as a close-contact weapon. In the space of a single heartbeat, Quorra's shortsword had sliced through air where Clu's head had been a split-second before and then whipped around in a second strike to catch with an ear-splitting shriek upon his disc's inner edge. Snarling, the sysadmin wrenched both weapons aside and bulled forward, his fist ruffling the hair by her temple as the ISO twisted aside, lithe as a snake. There was no way that Sam would be stepping into that hefting the equivalent of an anvil unless he wanted to be filleted in the process.

"Heads up!" he declared as he pulled the pin, and instead, braced himself the safe and prescribed distance of six feet from a fire as he aimed the nozzle directly at Clu's face and squeezed the handle.

A decade or so after its expiration date, the foam stuttered and spat, but the extinguisher still dutifully emptied its contents as Quorra skittered backwards and Clu stumbled; choking and spluttering. In a wild, desperate gesture, the sysadmin flung his disc at Sam and he jerked the extinguisher up; the weapon bouncing off the tank with a solid _clang_ before crashing through the screen of a machine behind him if the sound of breaking glass was any indication.

Half-blinded, Clu instinctively brought both arms up in guard when Quorra took the opening and spun into a side kick - but the sweep of the ISO's raised leg turned her more than intended with the slip-slide of the extinguishing foam now coating the floor, and the ISO's strike became a desperate, blind thing flung low and behind her as she over-balanced.

It was a wild shot - unpredictable - and Clu caught it right between the legs, folding with a choked whimper. Quorra, already recovered and ready to send a follow-up elbow strike, hesitated and blinked perplexedly down at her opponent when she realised where he had gone. Sam had to swallow reflexive sympathy before hastily stepping forward to deliver the _coup de gras_ , foot cracking soundly across Clu's face and sending the program sprawling onto his back.

In the relative silence which followed, the jukebox crooned, _"... so good to cruise with you, babe, so good to cruise with you ..."_

"Sam, I do not understand," the ISO querried, staring down at the now unmoving Clu. "Why would there be such an obvious weakness - "

Sam began to mentally tally the train of explanations involving the male anatomy which would be required to answer that question - apparently, the literary classics had not gone into great detail on that aspect - and quietly began to panic. "Uh, great job, Quorra!" he interrupted quickly, injecting the leftover adrenaline into his grin as he crouched and started levering the limp program up. "Let's get him all tied up and tucked away - "

"Wait - but, how do we know that he is not pretending - "

"Quorra, a little help please!" Sam overrode cheerily, the muscles in his cheeks beginning to ache as he fought to hold the expression. "I mean, lame hand and all," he prompted with a wave of his bloodied palm, not above a little guilt-tripping as a distraction. The ISO sent him a conflicted look of suspicion and contriteness before finally plucking Clu's disc out of the mangled arcade machine and helping to prop up the sysadmin's unwieldy weight from the other side. Sam was not overly concerned with how the program's head and limbs flopped and bumped into the various surfaces they passed, but it was still quite an exercise trying to navigate the narrow, twisting aisles between the games and then on down the stairs with an uncooperative body.

The remainder of their skirmish had not lasted that long, but between that and the time it took lugging Clu back, it seemed from the pitch of their voices that his father and other father-figure had managed to make up or call a temporary truce, at least. There were still some definite strained notes, but for the moment, no outright yelling.

"- should see a _real_ doctor - "

"Alan, dude, we've been over this - "

"And why have you not grown up _at all_ over the last twenty-one years - though, if anyone were to manage that, I'd imagine it would be you ... "

"Hey, I've done plenty of growing! See this, man? Tell me this wasn't here before - "

In fact, if he didn't know any better - which, in fact, he didn't - Sam might have thought they were _enjoying_ themselves on some deep, subconscious, masochistic level. As soon as he and Quorra came into sight and dumped an unconscious Clu on his face, however, all banter stopped.

Kevin blinked at them, and the hand which he had originally raised to gesture toward his facial hair slowly lowered; expression sobering. Alan, crouched over a jigsaw mess of curved, black acrylic, straightened as a look of vague alarm began to creep over his face. In between them sat a dark-suited figure, head bowed and back against the wall - a _bare_ head, dark brown hair mussed and sweat-matted, which rose just enough to reveal a young-Alan's face with a disturbingly un-Alan expression. The brown eyes, shadowed into near-black, fixed almost immediately upon Clu's form as lean shoulders hunched into an uncomfortably Rinzler-like curve.

Sam _knew_ what features had most likely existed beneath that black helmet. He had owned far too many action figures, posters, and tradable cards to not know who Tron had been modeled after, and could put two and two together. But it was still a shock to see incontrovertible proof of Tron/Alan in Rinzler's suit; nearly as big of one as when he had seen Clu's face for the first time.

"Is he dead?"

Alan's question broke Sam from his uneasy thoughts as he protested with reflexive heat, "Of course not!"

"Unfortunately," came the none-too-careful comment from next to him, and Sam shot Quorra a pained look. She returned it with a puzzled tilt of her head.

"Small favors," Alan muttered in turn with a hard look for the both of them as he came over to check on the unconscious program. "What in the world is this stuff he's covered in ... "

"Hit him with a fire extinguisher."

Alan paused, cast Sam an unappreciative look, then went back to his mutterings over Clu. "Great, now we have _two_ concussed patients -"

"I meant - " Sam began, needled, at the same time which Kevin began with a long-suffering air, "No doctors, Alan - "

"I got the memo, all right? But forgive me if I don't think the lawyers will take the word of a man who has been missing for twenty years if I'm sued for negligence." Kevin raked a hand through his hair and abruptly stood with a rough exhale, looking exasperatedly between all the present parties. "So, now what? No doctors, no police, no explanations - no _real_ explanations, anyway - "

"Alan," Kevin held up a hand with a guilty wince, voice grave. "I am sorry, really. Just bear with me a little longer, all right? But maybe we should move this somewhere else - "

"Which reminds me, Dad." God, it was still strange to call someone that after all these years. "You got any rope down here?"

Alan looked scandalized for a moment as he inferred the use for said rope, but after a single glance down at the comatose form, his mouth visibly tightened; perhaps recalling just how he had encountered Clu in the first place and what state the program had been in. Whatever his motivations, though, Sam was simply grateful that his godfather held his tongue this time as they managed to rummage up some ties and trussed Clu up as best they were able to. Sam was beginning to regret having dropped out of boy scouts. "I guess that'll work for now until we can get some zip-ties or duct tape ... " he ventured, eyeing the mass of clumsy knots dubiously.

"What about him?"

Sam's gaze slid uneasily toward Tron/Rinzler at Quorra's blunt question, and was not at all reassured when Kevin automatically slid a step closer toward the hunched figure; undeniably in his defense. "It's all right," his father said, predictably. "He's not a threat."

"Uh, hate to say it, Dad, but if he still knows all those kungfu moves he did on the Grid, I think he's a threat just by staying _breathing_ ," Sam reluctantly pointed out. "Look, I'm not saying I didn't see how he switched sides at the end - hell, I was staring straight into those canons of his in the back there before he pulled up! - but he doesn't even have any clear stripey things that show which team he's on!" he concluded with a gesture toward the blue and yellow stripes on Quorra and Clu's suits. Tron's attire was noticeably bare of distinguishing colors; the usual circuit patterns were a pale, ash gray pigmenting near-subliminal indentations in the surface.

Kevin's brow knit in bemusement. "You are basing your assessment of his loyalties off of the color of the ... 'stripey things' that were rendered by the laser?"

Sam could feel his face heating. "Yeah, so what? You got any examples of it not working yet?"

"Okay, timeout, boys!" Alan called out with an exasperated wave of his hands, casting a stern look upon both Flynns. His gaze slid toward the, thus far, completely passive Tron, and then flinched away just as quickly. "Look, hard as it is for me to believe, but Kevin made a good suggestion - "

"Hey!"

" - and we should move it out of here, because it's 3 am or something equally obnoxious and all of this isn't going to be solved before my first morning meeting. Sam, let's go to your place."

Alan's delivery had been so matter-of-fact, it took a moment to sink in. "Wait - what?" Sam squawked. "Why my place? I don't even have a separate _bedroom_ , remember? All loft and studio space?" he described while framing a square shape with his thumbs and forefingers and squinting through it. "Perfect bachelor's pad? Not for family functions?"

Alan tilted his head down, looking narrowly at him over the top edge of his glasses; something which never failed to make the inner boy inside Sam squirm. "And which part of hiding concussed psychotic costumed people who know kungfu in the middle of my family and Homeowner's Association controlled neighborhood sounds like a good idea to you?"

Sam opened and closed his mouth a few times before deflating. "I'm just saying," he grumbled.

"Any other objections?" Alan asked rhetorically as he raked the same gaze over the others - obviously not expecting any, and getting none - before he nodded firmly. "Good. Now, let's figure out how to get this show on the road."

"I can see now how Tron attained the status he had," Quorra murmured reverently to Sam as they bent over Clu once more. "Alan-one is very fierce! All of his programs must be warriors."

Sam tried to consolidate the rather nerdy boardroom image of his godfather which he had held all his life with Quorra's words, and could only come up with a strangled, "Uhm, yeah. Right."

The night continued its steady downturn when it was determined that it would be better if Quorra sat in Alan's car instead of taking Sam's bike with him. In case Clu woke up and started causing trouble - Sam offered to give him another kick in the head just to make sure, but was firmly turned down - he would be installed between Quorra and Kevin in the back while the still-silent Tron would take shotgun.

It was weird and unnerving to see the security program in such a state of passivity, though it was obvious there was still someone home. Other than the occasional stare at Clu, he had been studiously avoiding any look directed his way with none-too-subtle turns of his head. But unless Kevin gave him explicit directives - and even then, he seemed to obey out of sheer reflex alone rather than out of any true loyalty - he remained a silent, unnervingly still specter. In a way, Sam found it even creepier than Clu's homicidal tendencies; at least they knew exactly what to expect from the system administrator, while Tron now seemed more like a ticking bomb.

It was a strange comfort to have his godfather chivying them along; even Kevin seemed happy to take a back seat to Alan's directives. Without the constant threat of death or destruction of all he knew hanging over his head and both feet once more planted firmly in the world he had been born into, Sam felt the last residual tensions beginning to leak away, leaving a bone-weary lassitude in its place. He was looking forward to home more than he could ever recall feeling before.

Sam started up the bike, and as he strapped on his helmet, his eyes slid across Alan's car.

In the front, the older man was struggling to fasten Tron's seatbelt for him when the program's confused fumblings kept jamming the thing well short of the distance at which it could be buckled. In the back, his father was slanted across Clu's comatose slump as he tried to take Quorra through the motions, with marginally more success, though at one point he visibly huffed and unbuckled his own belt long enough so that he could get the reach needed to help her. As they tried to find the buckle in between the ISO and sysadmin, Clu started to slide sideways, his head eventually lodging itself at an awkward angle between Kevin's headrest and the man's arm; mouth hanging half-open and nose mashed to one side. Unconscious and not actively terrorizing, he looked disturbingly like a stoned 1980's Kevin.

"Thank god I don't have any neighbors," Sam groaned before kicking up his stand and turning onto the road.


	5. Kiss and Tell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, my apologies for the long lag time, but as I had mentioned in my notes, this will be an inconsistent effort due to the unfortunate realities of my life.
> 
> Secondly, thank you to everyone for the encouragement and reviews, even at this late date! I will try to respond to everyone!
> 
> Thirdly, I have new appreciation for asphalt and the steamrollers that flatten it into shape. It's amazing just what hijinks Real Life is capable of producing. Too bad it's not as easily mollified with catnip and doggy treats.
> 
> Fourthly, I have discovered it is disgustingly difficult to figure out Bruce's eye color. One site says hazel, another says gray, a third says blue, and then one even fudged the whole matter by saying "grayish-blue". I am going to settle on blue since that is what the Tron wiki says, and thanks to the person who pointed out that I had his eye color wrong (there is absolutely no good photo of Bruce on the net that one can deduce his eye color from - it all looked brown to me). I will change the previous parts to reflect this, but it is hot and I'm too lazy right now.
> 
> Talk talk talk, yak yak yak - while I love writing character development, I also love writing action. There won't be a lot of the latter for a little while, so to tide me over, I roughly sketched out a scene I'm planning on getting to in a chapter or two. If you'd like a sneak peek, scroll past the white space at the end.

**Chapter 5: Kiss and Tell**

Alan turned off the engine, and immediately, Marvin's high-pitched yaps bled through the car's insulation as he ran excitedly between the newly arrived vehicles. Alan cast a quick glance at the rearview mirror - catching Kevin's disgustingly bushy-eyed, inquisitive gaze framed within - before he took a deep breath and tugged his door open. "Come on," he instructed wearily, girding himself for the long hours ahead. He held no illusions that anything would be settled to his satisfaction soon enough for sleep to be an option this evening.

"Marv, Marv ... move, boy, not now," he admonished lightly, trying to nudge the excited dog gently aside as he got the door for Quorra. There seemed to be more activity inside the car than was really warranted before he remembered the seatbelt issue - and how in the world had Kevin managed to dig up English-speaking people that didn't know how to operate _seatbelts_? - before finally things were sorted and those who were mobile were outside the car.

Quorra was immediately and obviously fascinated by Marvin. There was none of the cooing or ear-fondling that most women descended into when confronted with the dog, but her eyes followed him with laser precision and her hands twitched occasionally as if he was a football she wanted to tackle. "What is it?" she asked, turning nearly a full circle in her attempt to keep track of the canine.

"A french bulldog," Alan answered at the same time that Kevin responded mildly with, "A dog."

Alan pinned his old friend with a look and a raised brow, which Kevin returned with a shrug and a serene smile. As Alan vacillated between reflexive irritation at that familiar, smug, know-it-all look and the block of nostalgic emotion which had abruptly wedged itself in his throat, Quorra clapped her hands together once and declared with an air of epiphany, "Oh! I thought they were much bigger? Do they really make effective guardians for users?"

Right. Of course. They didn't know about seatbelts, why should they know anything about dogs?

"Marv, buddy, no love for your master and provider of steaks, warm beds, and all things good?" Sam griped fondly, and sighed theatrically when Marvin proved exactly that - dodging nimbly around Quorra's outstretched hand with a disapproving growl when the woman finally leaned down to try and touch him, immediately racing straight past the aforementioned master for another, more cooperative target.

"All right, let's get everyone inside," Alan sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses when the dog started yapping intermittently again between fits of half-hearted growls from around the car's nose. "Break out some of that black sludge you call coffee, Sam, I can't pull all-nighters like I used to ... "

And then there was an abrupt flurry of machine-fire barking while Marvin was backing up with ears laid flat, and Alan was suddenly and intensely aware that the rapidly deepening growl was not coming from the dog ...

It was coming from Tron.

Alan's gaze had been turning toward Kevin, and so he saw the exact moment his friend _stilled_ \- eyes gone tight and flat with hints of something he had not seen since Jordan had died. He was only peripherally aware of Quorra lowering to a near-crouch, her hand angling over her shoulder, and Sam was not even on his radar until the younger Flynn blurted, "Oh crap!" and by the time Alan had turned around, the young man was diving for the pile of sports equipment propped against the inside corner of the roll-up door.

"What ... Sam, what are you doing?" Alan felt goosebumps marching up the back of his neck at everyone's reactions. After all, Tron was just _standing_ there, staring down at the still frantically barking Marvin with an almost inquisitive tilt to his head. "Is that some sort of synthesizer built into his suit? Why are you - Sam!" he yelped upon seeing his godson hefting an aluminum bat, and rushed forward to intercept.

"No, you don't understand Alan! Get out of the way, Rinzler could go - "

" _Tron_."

The single syllable cut through the strange, stuttering purl like wind through a fall of leaves, scattering them into a few last distant clicks as Tron tilted his head back toward Kevin. Except he was doing that eerie not-looking thing again, gaze focused just right of Kevin's shoulder, and Alan didn't know whether to be more creeped out by the obvious psychological issues of someone wearing his face, or by the way his returned friend had sounded: commanding. Pleading.

Anguished.

In short, nothing like the man he remembered. The Kevin he had known had been brash, confident - over-confident - with only good intentions saving him from outright arrogance. He had relied on his charisma to influence people, not this calm assurance which drew Tron with a visible sway before the man bowed his head; silent once more.

And Kevin had never looked so repentant.

"Jesus," Sam breathed out, half-lowering the bat as he scraped a hand through his hair, though Alan noticed as he shook himself from his reveries that the other hand was still clutching white-knuckled at the makeshift weapon's grip. "He can still do that in the real world? I thought it was his helmet making that noise."

Alan could feel already tired nerves frazzling just a little bit more. Couldn't they go through a single half hour without some incomprehensible emergency or mystery suddenly popping up? "What are you talking about? That helmet was little more than a solid plastic goldfish bowl. He just about choked in it before someone had the thought to crack it open."

Sam made a remarkable rendition of the aforementioned goldfish as the tip of the bat sank completely toward the ground. "Wait, wait - you're saying he was suffocating? As in ... _Clu_ saved his sorry as-?"

"Let's take this off the street, shall we?" Kevin interrupted diplomatically, though his attention was obviously divided, gaze still locked upon Alan's doppelganger.

"Right, because we still have someone tied up in the back of my car, and we don't want the street sweepers stumbling across him or the rest of this circus?" Alan sighed as he shooed a baffled-looking Quorra - good, someone else was finally looking as confused as he felt - toward the entrance so that he could help haul the unconscious Clu out of the backseat.

"But, Sam, you knew that Rinzler has always made that sound ... why are you puzzled that he continues to do so - "

Right. He _really_ should have known better than to think that he could ever be in the same camp as Quorra.

* * *

Kevin had forgotten how different the real world was.

When he had stepped on and off the Grid as frequently and casually as taking the commuter bus, the subtleties had been lost to him, his subconscious filtering them out like background traffic noise. But now, experiencing the shift for the first time after centuries of subjective time, he couldn't help noticing every single detail - just how much information, how much _texture,_ was packed into every surface, every unit of space.

The hollow bounce of sound from the far corners of the studio, partially absorbed and reflected by the furniture in between. The nubby texture of the sofa, the distribution of speckling on the concrete floor. The absorption and reflection of white light in its full spectrum, rich with color and shadows as it traveled around the room. Even the faint, musty smell of warehouse beneath the fresh, salty spice of ocean, and the familiar tang of heated metal from the parked motorcycle. And where the Grid was all sharply delineated contours, mathematically defined rays and precise algorithms, this was sloppy and fuzzy and _real_ in a way that had him touching everything in passing, inhaling each breath until his ribs strained, eyes dry from staring.

It was a relief not to be the one in charge. For a little while, he allowed himself to wallow selfishly in the flood of new-old stimuli, in the knowledge that the struggle was over, that he had survived and returned home. _Home_. Lost in the wonder of that thought and what he was experiencing, it took him a moment to realize that they were being shepharded into a seat ... most likely, to keep out from underfoot as Alan and Sam found a place to keep Clu.

Kevin could only imagine what they looked like; two programs and a user, lined up neatly upon the sofa, like the beginnings of a bar joke. Even the thought itself was rather alien - it had been a long time since he had worried about how he appeared to anyone but Quorra or the odd program who had dropped by. Tron sat in eerie stillness, shoulders half-slouched with coiled energy and back rigidly spaced from the cushions, hands resting upon his knees. Quorra looked around with unabashed excitement, shifting every so often - just to feel the springs creak, he half-suspected, from the regularity of the movements.

Alan unconsciously squared himself before them after he dropped his share of Clu's weight, rubbing at his shoulders, and for all the years which now lay upon the man, Kevin could still read the deep uncertainty under his friend's collected facade of the seasoned executive. Alan was no longer the nervy, socially-awkward programmer, but he still had the same honest, open character which telegraphed earnestness and integrity - and just about anything else which happened to be brewing beneath that mop of silvered hair. Alan had not thrown a successfully "surprise" birthday or anniversary party for Lora in all the time Kevin had known him.

God, how he had missed having that by his side, on Grid or off.

"Sam," Alan abruptly called, distracted, when the rip of duct tape being unfurled cut through the silence. The younger Flynn answered with an absent hum as he began to busily and messily tape Clu's slumped form to a chair. "Sam, hold off for a moment, let me see your hand," he said with a peculiarly worn exasperation.

"Nothing's wrong with my hand," Sam retorted with the rote, heatless reflex of an oft-repeated disclaimer. As if to punctuate the point, he unrolled another two feet of duct tape with particular vehemence while one end was attached to Clu's shoulder, nearly pulling the entire affair over and causing the chair's legs to screech across the floor. Quorra flinched and even Tron's gaze snapped up briefly at the sound.

"What's wrong with your hand?" Kevin asked, a twinge tugging uncomfortably just below his ribcage as he half-rose from his seat.

"I saw you favoring it, Sam. I still have my glasses on, you know," Alan responded dryly, and Kevin felt the twinge knot itself into an uncomfortable lump in his middle when he recognized the familiarity with which Alan approached Sam's prickly denials, the instinctive rhythm of their give-and-take as his friend alternately coaxed and bullied his son into the kitchen area, examining the young man's palm in the better lighting.

Alan reached up without a thought or glance into a cupboard to fish out a first aid kit. Kevin's inquiry had gone unnoticed.

"Jesus, Sam, how did you manage - "

"It was the disc. How was I supposed to know it would - "

"What disc - ?"

Kevin had to swallow as the volume of their conversation dropped into half-heard snatches. The uncomfortable feeling of being a voyeur was only completed when Sam called Quorra over, and the ISO immediately bounced off the couch with her typical enthusiasm, unhooking Clu's purloined disc to show Alan as the older man accepted it gingerly; careful of its outter edge.

This is what he had missed. Talking with his son, bandaging his hurts, being with him. He should be relieved that Alan had taken his role of godfather so seriously. Instead, he felt almost sick with  jealousy and regret.

But regret was something he had had an uncomfortable amount of experience in dealing with. Meditation had taught him to face it, even if he was still not so good at moving past it ... but, for once, he had more options than he had ever dreamed of ever having again.

"Tron."

The program's head tilted toward him though that solemn gaze still would not meet his, and with a heavy heart, Kevin realized that if his friend had still been wearing his helmet, it would look exactly like what Rinzler had done whenever called for. Head turned, bowed, acknowledging ... but beneath that mirrored surface, who knew what he had really been looking at, if anything at all?

"Tron, look at me," he pleaded quietly.

Tron shifted, even that minute gesture eloquent in its puzzlement. But he knew that face too well and saw the tension in the carefully blank mien, the uneasy flicker of eyes that twitched just a centimeter closer to Kevin's face before retreating to the side again.

"Look at me!"

Frustration and concern sharpened his voice, made it snap in a way which he was immediately ashamed of. But Tron's gaze was suddenly and unblinkingly riveted upon him - even if it was visibly tight and unhappy - so Kevin took his victories where he could and settled himself with a deep breath before coaxing, "What's wrong? Why wouldn't you look at me?" The program's mouth tightened and his throat worked, but as the silence stretched, Kevin prodded, "Just say something, Tron, say anything. I don't care. I just want to help you - "

"No."

Kevin blinked, and even Tron looked slightly astonished by his own rebellion. "Ha!" Kevin barked. "That's my friend. Stubborn to the last." But the edges of the grin he tried to hold felt strained when that gaze went skittering to the side once more.

Uneasiness and curiosity warred within him. Even in that short syllable, he could almost _feel_ the subliminal scratch of that electronic snarl. Unlike himself and Clu, there would be no difficulty in telling Tron and Alan apart by voice. Just how many "liberties" had the laser taken in attempting to form programs into humans, and just how successful had it been in modifying the templates into something biologically viable?

"How are you feeling, buddy?" he asked as he reached up toward that shallow cut over the brow, long since scabbed over. "Does anything hurt, feel like it's ... not working right? Any malfunctions? Warnings? Errors?"

Tron's brow knit, more emotion than he had shown all evening other than that initial outburst when they had tried to pry the helmet off, and while he did not do anything as blatant as move away, his hand rose to his temple first, interrupting Kevin's gesture before it could reach him. Brushing over the dried streaks of blood they had not managed to wipe off at the arcade, he frowned even more deeply at the rusty-red flakes which clung to his gloved fingertips.

Kevin watched the program's expression intently. "Blood," he informed quietly, though he knew he was not answering the right question.

The rasp came unbidden this time, rough with disbelief. "Users bleed."

"I guess you just received an upgrade in privileges, then," Kevin returned solemnly.

"Privileges," Tron echoed, expression twisting, and Kevin could not help the flash of fear that locked his muscles and hitched his breath when the gloved hand clenched on itself. But the violence hinted at never materialized; the program's gaze darting with clear intelligence this time to left and right, taking in their surroundings with a single, cutting look. "I _have_ no privileges - "

"Kevin - "

He had been so intent on Tron's reactions, trying to puzzle out the program's current state, he nearly jumped out of his own skin at the voice behind him. "Alan!" he greeted with a reflexive grin, automatically tugging the edges of his jacket straight. And wasn't that a hoot, that the laser gave back his original clothes? Good thing, since this jacket had been one of his favorites ... though the jeans were suspiciously tight around the waistline now. "How's Sam doing?"

Predictably, at the interruption, Tron had retreated into his shell again - perhaps even more wilted than before, head now turned blatantly away from the Encom board member.

Alan glanced between them with open suspicion, but finally rolled his shoulders with a sigh and conceded, "It was a pretty long cut, but shallow. I don't think it will need stitches, so we just patched it up. That ... 'disc' is something else."

Kevin could not help the gamine smile which slipped automatically across his face at his friend's pointed look - the reflex was difficult to suppress even after all the time that had gone by; there were few who had challenged him as brazenly as Alan Bradley had. Did. "Yeah, it's something, ain't it?"

Alan groaned and rubbed a hand over his face, an irreverant prayer for patience emerging half-muffled. "Enough with the games already, Kevin, it's about time you gave me the truth; I deserve that much!" he growled, and Kevin couldn't help deflating a bit.

"Yeah, you're right. You deserve at least that much," he sighed, glancing toward the softly silhouetted forms of Sam and Quorra in the kitchen, their heads bowed together as they conversed, and clapped a hand to Tron's shoulder before he pushed himself up. "Come on, show me the place."

Alan hesitated, perhaps doubting the sudden turn-around, but at least he took him at face value and nodded, leading the way. "So," he prompted, as soon as they were outside easy earshot from the others, not even bothering to play along with the sightseeing ploy. There was not much else that wasn't visible from any one corner of the studio due to its open-floor plan.

Kevin pondered where to start, tried to rewind his memories back to a logical entry point, and finally spread his hands helplessly. "So. Where should I start? How much did Sam tell you?"

The executive grimaced, and as he often did when thinking or frustrated, started pacing - three long strides to the left, then three to the right. "Just enough to make me think either he's crazy or I'm crazy for the conclusions I'm coming to! What happened to you in 1989?"

So Kevin took a deep breath, and began.

Only a few minutes in, Alan called for a pause so that he could scrounge up two folding chairs. Halfway through, there was another pause when he smelled the heady scent of coffee, and Kevin almost couldn't continue after his first blissful taste - no matter how bitter - in far too many cycles. He had never been able to get the coffee rush just right on the Grid. The narration stretched out three times as long as it should have been as Alan peppered him mercilessly with questions.

At the end, with his second cup already empty by his feet, interlaced hands over his mouth with his elbows propped upon his knees, Alan could only husk, "That is all so - it's so unbelievable, it might be true."

" _Is_ true," Kevin corrected, already feeling jittery from the caffeine, and not caring a whit as he sipped at at the dregs of his own refilling. He was probably going to get a stomach ache from this, but by god, he was going to savor every drop.

"Well, I certainly couldn't have come up with anything wilder - but then, you had always been the game developer genius."

Kevin could feel his mouth curling, and his grin only widened upon noticing the rueful amusement Alan was trying unsuccessfully to suppress. "Man, you just gotta let yourself go! I've seen what Tron can do - what you programmed Tron to be able to do. There's no hiding from me now - I'm on to you."

And, just like that, the burgeoning comraderie vanishes like a blown candle. "Speaking of Tron - what are we going to do with him? All of them, for that matter," Alan asked with enough grimness to pull Kevin to the edge of his seat.

"What do you mean?" he asked warily.

"What do I mean?" came the disbelieving echo. "One's psychotic - "

" - misunderstood and neglected - "

" - one's brain-damaged - "

"Not brain _damaged_ , he's just been brain _washed_ \- " Kevin interrupted, feeling his own hackles rising.

" - and the third's about to set herself up with Sam!"

"Hey! What're you implying there - Quorra's a fine young woman," Kevin squinted irritably at his friend as Alan threw his hands up in the air.

"They're not even human!"

"Alan!"

They stared at each other like two mastiffs at a stand-off, and after a first then a second mental exercise cleared his head, Kevin couldn't help thinking that they were probably sporting the same mulish expression too. It wasn't enough to bring a smile to his face, but it was enough for him to soften his voice as he reminded, "Tron bled. He nearly suffocated. He panicked when we tried to take the helmet off. Clu reacted pretty convincingly to being kicked between the legs from all reports, and Quorra wanted revenge for her people, but retained enough sense to listen to me before she did something unfixable. She is bright, she is curious, and she loves Jules Verne. How much more human do they need to be, man?"

Alan's jaw tightened, but Kevin could tell he had driven his point home even before the executive took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. "Christ, Flynn, how do you always manage to make an unholy mess of even the simplest things?"

Kevin unselfconsciously smoothed a hand over a wrinkle in his shirt. "When you've got the touch - "

"Please, spare me your touches," Alan snorted.

"So, over your panic attack now?"

Alan's nose wrinkled, but he had the grace to admit, if grudgingly, "I'm over my panic attack."

"I bet Lora would've handled it better."

"Now that's taking it too far!" the executive growled, but this time, his lips were stretching in a full grin, which Kevin answered before they both winced at the logical follow-up thought. "Kevin, what were you doing with Lora's old prototype in a hidden basement?"

"Hey, you know what I've been up to with it - I just spent an hour explaining it to you," Kevin tried to deflect.

"That's government property - " Alan began with narrowed eyes, just before Kevin noticed movement behind him and cut him off with a hasty motion.

"Hey, Sam, Quorra," he greeted, a little over-loudly, and Alan was giving him the stink-eye but thankfully fell silent on the topic for now. "What's up?"

It was only then that he noticed that Quorra had her gloves off. And was running her hands up and down Sam's sleeve. Over his ear. Up through his hair - okay, so he could understand Alan's choked off sound. He himself was caught somewhat uncomfortably between the thoughts that the woman - ISO - he had practically mentored like a daughter was unwittingly feeling up his biological son, and there was no reason he should be feeling protective of _either_ of them, since he of all people should recognize what she was really doing. "Quorra, maybe you should ... explore something else."

"I did; the metal was very smooth and cool, and the cabinet door rough, and I've touched my own hair and skin on the Grid but it all feels _different_ here ... oh. Am I infringing on user-only protocols?" Quorra withdrew with a blink.

"Hey, I didn't mind," Sam protested, casting his real and surrogate fathers both an exasperated look before motioning toward the nearest door with his chin. "It's almost dawn, and I was thinking of taking Quorra out to see it. But I wanted your help on figuring out their clothes - you know, maybe experiment on one of the guys first."

"What do you mean their - " Alan began before he blinked, then turned to Kevin incredulously. "You weren't kidding about the zippers and buttons thing?"

Kevin shrugged and levered himself out of his seat. "What's the biggest pair of scissors you've got, Sam?" he asked cheerfully.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 _Sneak peek into the future ..._

Clu tore out into the street, and Sam automatically lunged off the sidewalk after him.

It was pure reflex which turned his gaze to the left, toward oncoming traffic - after all, it was not as if it would do him any good at this late stage, with all of his momentum committed the moment his foot pushed off the curb. Thus, even as a rapidly approaching blue Prius started braying in alarm and the stray thought that he should have known better than a program flitted through his head, he caught the exact moment when a hand lunged between his vision and the braking car ...

... and abruptly found his world uppended, breath lost, vision vague from the glancing bounce of his head off concrete when he was forcibly yanked back and went sprawling upon the sidewalk. He blinked -

\- and saw Tron arching in an impossible, perfect curve away from the ground -

\- _blink_ -

\- legs tucking themselves up just outside of the bumper's reach as hands slapped upon the polished hood, elbows flexing -

\- _blink_ -

\- and vaulted, twisting through the air, the car's periwinkle top sliding untouched beneath him, a lithe tumble of dark limbs -

- _blink_ -

\- before landing in a perfect three-point crouch behind the Prius, one arm flung wide as the program watched, unblinking, the bumper of a second car screech to a halt just a handspan from his nose, breath misting across the chrome as he straightened with unhurried aplomb.


	6. No Good Deed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been a while! A BIIIIIIIIIIIIIG HUG to all the supporters of The Sea ... I was amazed by the continued calls for it in spite of its hiatus, and as a result, I made it a goal to put out another chapter before I polished off the epilogue to The Devil's Dues. :) I admit, I'm a little nervous because getting into the headspace of The Sea again has been a little strange - this was my first Tron fic and so my views of the characters have changed dramatically over the months that I've been fully immersed in the fandom - but hopefully things won't seem too out of place.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!
> 
> (And thank you to Expositionfairy for the chapter title idea!)

_Look at me!_

It had been a long time since he had looked at anyone.

They had all been patterned from the same templates after a while - fear, hatred, desperation, shock; carefully schooled neutrality, the occasional morbid curiosity. All else had been permutations or combinations thereof, varying only in intensity, and so he had stopped looking; stopped meeting the staring eyes, stopped picking out the harsh, tense lines of mouths and jaws. Beneath the mask and armor of the helmet, the tilt of his head had become a reasonable compromise between a show of attention and the itching discomfort of viewing those same expressions over and over again. It had sufficed for over a thousand cycles, for thousands of faces, and become a habit so deeply ingrained that the decision tree never factored into surface processing anymore ...

Except for three. There were still three faces that made him avert his eyes in a carefully planned and executed routine.

The first was one he had obeyed because of what he had become. The face of a user, the face of a friend, the face of a liar. The smile, in particular, had been a special kind of torture ... and Clu had smiled wide and frequently after the Grid had become his.

The second was one he had obeyed because of what he had been. Kevin Flynn had changed - a disguise? - and it was just different enough to be bearable, perhaps. Different enough to tell the user from the sysadmin, with his inscrutible user ways and manifestations. But when Kevin Flynn's voice had gone flat and hard - too similar - he had obeyed without thought; a sub-surface commandment as ingrained as dodging the flicker of an incoming disc _._

The third was one whom he would have obeyed because of what he was. Alan-one, Alan Bradley, changed, like Kevin Flynn. Was this a common filter the users applied to themselves, the white hair and distorted features? But still recognizable in the snatched, sideways glances that he allowed himself; that voice which he had last heard echoing down through a pillar of light, so many cycles ago.

Which, even now, spoke as a touch tilted his chin back, baring his throat.

* * *

"So, what's with the outfits?"

"Dunno," Sam muttered as he tried to carefully slide the flat of the kitchen shears' blade between skin and suit without catching anything. "Soon as I landed, they had me out of my street stuff and in one of these things. Good thing the laser seems to default to your last recorded clothing state, or I'd be dealing with one of these right now - christ, they sure fit 'em snug down there. You think Hollywood would pay good money for that laser?"

Alan snorted. "Of course. It even comes with its own special effects and extras cast - could have cut Avatar's budget by half at least. Too bad you could be fined and jailed for peddling the greatest logistics revolution in history. As a high-tech wardrobe designer, no less."

"Designer _and_ clothier," Sam corrected triumphantly as he finally got the right leverage to make the initial cut through the collar.

The suit in the real world was like a weird mix of rubber and kevlar, a wet suit with reinforcement. Tough enough that his hand was cramping by the time he worked his way past Tron's chest, and he had a sudden, inane image of himself trying to shell the program like a lobster. His grip slipped as a snort burst out of him, and he was forced to mutter an apology when Tron flinched at the poke of the scissors' tip.

Leaning back and shaking out his hand as he took a break, Sam eyed the narrow slit he had managed to produce halfway down the suit's torso as he asked, "So, you said that was Lora's laser?" A quick glance up revealed that Tron had his gaze angled discreetly past Sam's left shoulder, expressionless and unmoving but for the occasional blink.

Alan gave him a sour look, which Sam ignored with the ease of long practice. "You were never this sharp-eared or focused when you were in school or listening to me lecture you," the man grumbled before sighing with a shrug. "You knew that Lora worked in Encom's labs before you were born. That's where we'd met. That was the prototype of her first project there: a laser that can digitize real world objects - and people, apparently - and store them in electronic format."

"So how come it ended up in Dad's basement?"

His godfather scraped a hand through his hair with a frustrated sound. "Heck if I know. That thing was supposed to have been _returned_ ... "

"Returned? To who?" Sam prodded verbally when there was an extended pause.

"To whom," Alan automatically corrected before grimacing. "To the military."

Sam stopped and stared. "The military? That's _their_ laser? And, what, they think their multi-I-don't-know-how-many-significant-digits-dollar molecular digitizer is still sitting in some warehouse somewhere?"

"Welcome to the government," Alan couldn't help gibing. "They're misplacing things all the time, like [25-foot German periscopes](http://www.uboat.net/announce.html?story=34). Though I suspect they received more help than usual this time in the 'liberation' of the prototype."

Sam alternated between intrigued and dubious. "So, dad's cached government property in his basement."

Alan rolled his eyes. "Don't get too excited, it's more of a semantics issue than anything else. We ostensibly developed it using their R&D funds, but we had to dip into investor pockets before the funds arrived, and the laser was just a mark two prototype - the commercial-ready version was never completed before the contract was annulled. Well, if we had ever gotten to the contract part. In classic government fashion, everything was done with the cart before the horse - we demonstrated the mark one, _then_ we got the money that had been earmarked for it, and the footnotes of the contract for it all in the first place were _still_ being revised when your father blew the whistle on Dillinger. Everything imploded after that, and we never got to the point of the hand-off."

"Huh? Why? What does Dillinger pawning a few games off as his own have anything to do with the government?"

Alan shrugged. "It was a scandal, government funds invested in a company led by a fraud. Taxpayers wanted credibility. Encom nearly went under, not because of bad press - even though that would have been bad enough, thank you - but due to all the government contracts that were suddenly pulled. It was ... quite the lively period in the company's history," he admitted with a pained grimace, before memory softened tone and expression. "But that's when your father got his chance to shine. Fresh from his victory over Dillinger, his name finally acknowledged - it was like he was on top of the world already, and was just waiting for everyone else to catch on. I still sometimes think that the company pulled through solely on his belief that nothing could stop him ... it was like he dared the world to crush Encom, and the world backed down from the dare.

" _That's_ what won him the title of CEO, not just the games," he concluded quietly, slipping off his glasses and holding them up to squint at the already pristine lenses in the low light. "If it was just games development, he would've been project management. Maybe VP. But his radical new ideas on how Encom should relate to its market segments and end users gave the company an alternative route of survival - more than just survival, they made Encom the greatest innovative success in its industry. That's what made him a leader, rather than just another a programmer."

And that's what had earned him the loyalties, faith, and belief of people such as Alan Bradley and Roy Kleinberg.

Suddenly, it hit Sam that he really didn't know much about the company. _His_ company. Oh, he knew enough about its public history and surface issues - the strategic maneuvers over the last decade to expand Encom's monopolistic hold on its chosen markets, the aggresively corporate attitude that has gripped its upper echelons - nothing that anyone who regularly scanned business headlines or the occasional board meeting minutes wouldn't have gleaned. But he didn't _really_ know anything about the cogs within the machine; how they meshed, whose hands turned the crank. In fact, he had purposely distanced himself up till now, hating all that it stood for and what it had become.

He had never even wondered, until now, what exactly about his father had been so extraordinary as to have catapulted him into the position of CEO of a company that would eventually become a household name across the world.

Looking at the scissors still dangling from his fingers and feeling precariously perched upon the edge of some personal epiphany, Sam took a deep breath before reaching out to begin the laborious process of freeing Tron's shoulders and arms from the form-fitting gridsuit.

* * *

Alan had to help Sam peel his double out of the suit, with no little help - or, rather, hindrance - from Tron himself. The man, already unapproachable at the best of times, had tightened up like wet leather left in the sun as soon as they laid hands on him directly, and acted as if he had never figured out how sleeves worked before in his life.

"C'mon, Tron, a little cooperation here," Sam growled as he tugged on the end of the attached glove. "Stop curling your fingers, we can't get this off if you've got your hand locked up - "

All Sam received for his troubles was a blank look of irritation, confusion, and more than a little skepticism.

"He's worse than you were when we tried getting you into your first suit," Alan grunted as he finally managed to peel the strange fabric down the man's shoulders, distracting Tron long enough that Sam could pry most of the hand out of the glove. 

Christ, had Alan ever looked this fit? If he hadn't already been happily married for several decades and well past the hope or need to compete, he might have felt insecure and jealous right now - 

All right, he was _still_ feeling a little insecure and jealous right now. But only for lost opportunities. Really.

"And I still think that it's cruel and unusual to strap anyone less than thirty into one of those things," Sam asserted as he admonished Tron to hold still, making a last strategic snip with the scissors before one arm pulled free completely, liberated from its shell.

"You didn't object to the tux we got you on prom night," Alan couldn't resist, grinning even before the predictable groan came, but all amusement faded as the muscles in Tron's revealed back bunched and pulled, and something caught his eye in the uncertain lighting. "Hey ... what's this?" he frowned, lifting his glasses as he leaned close to squint directly at the skin over the man's right shoulderblade.

There were ... _patterns_ drawn on it, the lines too regular and symmetrical to be a birthmark. He had heard that tattoo removal often left shadowy remnants behind, but these were silvery-pale instead of dark, nearly invisible unless one peered sideways. Honestly, they were like old scars but unridged, and when he tentatively pressed a finger along one of the slender lines, the skin felt indistinguishable from the rest.

Tron froze at the first touch, then gave a convulsive shudder at the drag of the fingertip.

"Uh, Bradley ... "

Alan straightened, dropping his glasses back on his nose as he blinked at Kevin.

His old friend had returned from raiding Sam's closet and drawers with a pile of clothes stacked haphazardly in his arms. Quorra was now draped in one of Sam's hoodies and a pair of sweatpants cinched tight around her hips, her own black suit still visible above the collar and below the cut-off legs. The woman looked oddly astonished, mouth slack as her wide eyes darted between Alan and Tron. Kevin himself looked as cagey as he ever did when he realized he had misstepped and was one strong word away from being forced to 'fess up.

"What," Alan said with leaden suspicion, automatically bracing himself.

"You, uh, might wanna keep your hands to yourself."

And, as ever, whatever revelation had come from his friend's mouth was so far into left field that Alan was left scrabbling for a frame of reference. "What? Wait ... are you implying that I'm - !"

"Naw, man, relax! I'm just telling you, etiquette's a little different on the Grid - "

Alan boggled. " _Etiquette_ ... ?"

"Well, no, not exactly, but they've got these ... these _circuit lines_ , you know?" Kevin dumped the clothes on the nearest couch before he made a vague, encompassing gesture. "C'mon, here ... Quorra, show 'em your hands and arms."

Still a little wide-eyed but now looking more bemused than flabbergasted, the woman stepped forward as she pushed the shirt's sleeves up and held her arms out awkwardly, as if she hadn't quite figured out yet how one was supposed to deal with the extra cloth when one wanted it out of the way.

While Kevin had refrained from dealing with the main portion of the suit itself, he had at least peeled off the arm-length gloves. Tentatively taking the tips of her fingers to tilt her hands back and forth beneath the light, Alan frowned as he picked out the same subtle patterns of discoloration, albeit in much cleaner and simpler lines; mainly just one thick stripe with the occasional hair-fine branching. "What are these?"

"Far as I can tell? Kinda like sensory clusters. They tend to be a little more sensitive there, depending on the context."

"Context? What the hell do you mean by conte - " Alan began irascibly before he abruptly dropped Quorra's hands as if burned and gaped at his friend. Sometime friend. Occasional ally. Definitely full-time irritant. "You've got to be kidding me. As in, like, erogenous zones?"

"Uhm, okay, can we change the subject or something, guys?" Sam interjected nervously.

Flynn, the troll, managed to pull a smug and superior grin out of somewhere. "What? Dude, I've no idea where your brain's going, I'm just saying that - "

"He is _covered_ in those things - !" Alan accused with a jab of his finger toward Tron, who had regarded the entire exchange thus far with that same impassive mien, unconcerned by either his half-stripped state or the subject matter being discussed. Alan had to resist the odd impulse to either drop his coat over his younger self's shoulders or cover his ears.

"All right, man, chill," Flynn finally laughed, holding his hands up in a gesture of peace. "Far as I know? Yeah, they can have some fun with those - " never mind that Alan's head was busy tripping over itself trying to figure out how or why programs have that sort of 'fun' in the first place, " - but otherwise, it's like having a few more nerve endings packed into your fingertips than in your elbow. On the Grid, they can get some extra data through those that they don't through non-circuited areas. That's all."

That's all. Programs possessing full sentience and human intelligence - that's all. Lora's laser project being able to digitize humans and bring them back without noticeable side effects - that's all. Programs being given mostly-human bodies with a few added bonuses - that's all. Alan slid his fingers beneath his glasses to rub at sandpapery eyes, wondering if all of this would make any more sense with a full night's sleep.

He had a sneaking suspicion that it wouldn't.

"Hey, I recognize these," Sam murmured as he tugged a bit more of the suit away. "They're like the patterns on the original Tron figures."

"They are," Kevin confirmed as Alan sighed and resignedly moved to help continue stripping the material away. "Scanned them directly from Tron himself."

"Really?" Sam's brow crinkled up skeptically as they pulled, pushed, cajoled, and finally managed to tug Tron's other arm out of its sheath, finally leaving his torso bared to scrutiny. "These lines are different ... here and here ... " he made broad gestures toward the air over certain points on the man's abdomen.

Alan's brows rose amusedly at how easily the differences had been picked out, and Sam caught his look.

"Hey, you know how much Tron meant to me as a kid," his godson muttered with a defensive hunch of his shoulders.

For a moment, Alan thought he saw Tron's gaze flicker toward Sam and a crease mar his brow before all was still again.

"This can't be right." Kevin frowned as he sank into a crouch beside Sam, one hand cupped meditatively over his mouth and beard. "None of my edits manifested like that. These must have been made after - "

He cut off abruptly, but even before Alan could ask _after what?_ the man was turning on a heel to regard the, thus far, only completely silent figure in the room.

Alan swallowed against the sudden dry sensation in his mouth as he followed Kevin's gaze toward the unconscious Clu. To be able to reach right into the essence of a person and ... and _reprogram_ them ...

He caught Quorra shifting out of the corners of his eyes. She had wrapped her arms around herself, face closed and hard, and suddenly, she didn't look all that young and innocent after all.

"Kevin, why did you steal the laser?" Alan sighed, trying - and failing - to suppress a shiver. He was suddenly, acutely reminded that Clu had not been the only one to make modifications. Kevin had made edits too ... had been playing a god, albeit a benevolent one.

"I didn't _steal_ it - " Kevin grunted as he pushed himself back to his feet.

"Are you seriously trying to parse semantics with me right now, Flynn?" Alan growled. "It was developed using government R&D funds - "

"Oh, come on, man, you knew as well as I did that they weren't interested in operating it themselves!" Kevin waved the point away as if it had as little weight as a gnat. "The military's all about contracting out services. At most, this was little more than a lease - "

"Fine, then why didn't _we_ keep developing it? The patents were all in our name, we couldn't sell the technology to non-US allies, but nothing prevented us from developing it for commercial applications - for god's sake, Kevin, we essentially had a working teleporter! We could have revolutionized world transportation!"

"Come on, I told you about the Grid!" Kevin retorted, a bit of sharpness finally entering his voice as he swept an arm out to encompass Quorra, Clu, and Tron. "Look at them! You think I was gonna let it all become just a hub-and-spoke freight service - ?"

"Hey - _hey_!" Sam interrupted, waving his arms to regain their attention when Alan and Kevin's gazes locked dangerously. "Speaking of them, just what's the deal with the sentient programs and evolving ISOs, anyway? I mean, I can figure out that the laser needs a god-awful big database of digital and real-world equivalents to work, but that's a far cry from the level of AI sophistication you've got here ... "

Kevin grudgingly settled his weight back on his heels and sighed. "Yeah, well, the laser was just part of it. Did you ever wonder why the military had a contract signed with Encom, a company that had made the larger part of its profits in the commercial sector from _games_? Why the databases and internal networks between the laser and The Grid and the MCP were all on the same network?"

Sam hardly needed any pause at all before he breathed, "War games."

Alan blinked and then blinked again. "Tron," he stated with dawning realization, and just barely caught the flicker of the program's namesake twitching at the edges of his vision. "I had a concrete target for Tron when the MCP had been installed, but Tron was commissioned even before we knew the MCP even existed. A custom security program when there had been perfectly adequate off-the-shelf firewalls available at the local store, if all they wanted was to keep the company networks secure from intrusion."

Kevin nodded, looking oddly troubled and pleased at the same time. "You got it. Of course, we weren't writing stuff yet for their specific scenarios, this was all still R&D, so there were all sorts of low-key office and maintenance applications running around too; the AI versions of 'Hello world!' as we worked out how to overcome the technological hurdles. I didn't find out all this 'till after I was bumped up the food chain, but as soon as I did? I knew we had something special, that we'd succeeded beyond our wildest dreams, something that we couldn't let the military get their hands on. They'd have just locked it into a black box, hidden it away and kept it for themselves ... this needed to be shared - "

"Funny, I thought you were describing yourself there for a moment." Alan surprised himself with the unexpected edge of bitterness to his words, but he couldn't bring himself to be too sorry, even at Kevin's regretful look. After all, he had been forced into his friend's role both professionally and personally for the last two decades; after, from all accounts, the man had run off chasing his visions without a thought for whether there were cliff edges nearby. When Kevin drew breath to respond, Alan took one look at his expression and growled, "So help me, Flynn, if the next words out of your mouth are, 'That's not fair' ... !"

The man blinked, looking startled. And more than just the gray hairs and the beard and the wrinkles, Alan finally felt the _change_ in his old friend as Kevin glanced back toward the comatose Clu and answered with a weary sigh, "Honestly? What I was going to say was that I hadn't wanted to show you until everything was perfect."

* * *

The studio was nearly as quiet as the Grid once everyone was gone.

Sam had taken Quorra out on the Ducati, its familiar rumble still an oddly, surprisingly comforting sound. Alan had braced himself with a last cup of coffee before finally rolling out into the pre-dawn streets for the office, still dressed in the same suit and tie had had worn all of yesterday.

Tron stood before one of the windows set in the rolled-down siding of the shipping container, staring out over the water toward the distant lights of downtown and Encom Tower. Kevin fancied he could see a hint of wonder sharpening the normally blank gaze as morning began to shade the sky a pale, translucent blue, and it was enough to forestall him from further questions at the moment. They had time, now, after all.

But even as the words skittered across Kevin's mind, a subresonant purl crept through the room and Tron was turning, shoulders curled, focused, _intent_. Marv barked once, making Kevin jump, and settled into its own growl as he turned to follow the line of Tron's sight ... to meet a slitted gaze set in an all too familiar face.

Kevin swallowed, stomach turning over.

"Flynn," Clu hissed.


	7. Do You Hear What I Hear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG CAN YOU BELIEVE IT I UPDATED
> 
> Sorry, sorry! I got distracted by all the writings, and then life happened, but due to everyone's encouragement and in spite of some really hectic times and a lot of ADD, I'm finally kicking out more Sea! \o/ Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who wrote me! You make this possible, seriously. :)
> 
> Aaaaaaaaand, to celebrate the holiday season, I give you ...

There was light _everywhere_. Just as much as in the arena, except this was all warm tones and slanting rays, and it made his head throb with an odd, rhythmic pain to stare at. Through his lashes, he had an impression of stark shadows and obscenely saturated hues; a profusion of _detail_ , as if some fractal texture-mapping had run amok. 

But then he recognized the outlines of the figures silhouetted across the room, and the eye-watering contrasts and bodily aches were all too easily dismissed. _"Flynn."_

The creator turned. "Clu."

He was back in user clothes; clothes that had not made an appearance in over a kilocycle, though the underlying skin remained the same. Bearded, white-haired, face rough with extra textures - _old_ , a rarely used lexicon spat out.

And beside him, Rinzler. Except that Rinzler had a face again, even averted as it was, and was clad in more of the user world's fashions. Shoulders slouched beneath a jacket, hands loose at his sides, head canted as he stared at something through the less than ideally transparent windows - he looked like he belonged here. Like he was just another user.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way."

Clu's gaze jerked back to Flynn. Stared disbelievingly before he started to laugh; a rough, grating sound that made even Rinzler's head tilt. "I cannot even _begin_ to parse all the ways you'd expect this to be different. Were you supposed to have escaped sooner? Was I not supposed to be here? Was the system supposed to be _fixed_ \- " He bared his teeth when the user's mouth opened to protest, and hissed in vicious mockery, " - or are you going to say you _really_ wanted to stay this time but something got in the way again?"

Flynn's mouth closed with an audible click.

Clu looked away with a raw sound, writhing against his restraints. He wanted to laugh at the same time he wanted to roar, wanted to hit something, wanted to _move_. He itched beneath his shell like when he had walked through Flynn's sanctuary, and stared at his distorted reflection in the mirrored surfaces of user flotsam before he had swept them all off the table -

"Clu! Clu, damnit - "

He snarled when he saw the hand reaching for him, jerked backwards hard enough that the chair he was bound to scraped loudly upon the imperfections of the floor. _Everything_ here was so obscenely _textured_ , no wonder Flynn tried to start over with the Grid -

The user rocked back on his heels, mouth pressed to a thin line as he let his hand fall by his side again. "Clu, look, all I had was an idea, all right? Just an idea, and it didn't work out. But maybe it's better this way, maybe this is our second chance - "

" _Our_ second chance? What happened to _your_ third chance, your fourth, how many cycles did we wait for all of your _chances_ ... " and by this point, he didn't care that it wasn't the main issue or even _an_ issue anymore because something inside his head was pounding unceasingly and his middle was churning weirdly and, at the moment, he couldn't for all his processor time manage to string anything more profound together except that he really, really wished he could turn off all the lights. _All_ of them. The entire user system.

"Man. It hasn't been that long that I've forgotten what I look like when I have the mother of all hangovers."

Clu snarled weakly, but couldn't quite make himself open his eyes further than a narrowed, furious squint down at the floor. Except that the extra tension so near his temples was making the internal pounding all the more pronounced, and he was beginning to wonder if there was just something fundamentally incompatible between basic and user code ...

"Hold on there, buddy, I'm sure Sam has some painkillers around here. C'mon, Tron."

Cloth rustled and steps scuffed. Clu had no system-access here, but he didn't need it to track Flynn's movements as the user walked away to another section of the room. It was only when he did not process a second set that he slanted his eyes upwards - perhaps he should not depend on any tenuous connection remaining with Rinzler here, but he had not thought the program to be so _completely_ hidden from his senses ...

Which he had not been. Rinzler still stood sentinel by the windows, just as he had since Clu's awakening.

"Hey, Tron, you probably know just as much as I do about what these things look like these days - "

'Tron' did not stir. Didn't so much as blink, even when the deepening slant of light rays slashed bright across his face; eyes wide and staring, completely entranced.

Clu could feel something hot and heavy settle deep within his chest; something that made the skin across his cheeks tighten, his lips curl back, his gaze narrow. " _Rinzler_ \- " he spat, betrayal honing his tongue - 

The dark head turned sharply toward him; shoulders rounded, arms loose, hands ready. The light had continued to grow behind him until he was merely a shadow, and for a moment, even with the unfamiliar outlines of user clothing, his silhouette looked exactly like -

"Tron! C'mon, man, some help for the needy, here!"

This time, Flynn's hail drew the program's gaze away. Clu's breath remained stoppered in his throat, cutting words swallowed, as his one-time enforcer shook himself, blinking, before padding obediently toward the summons. Shoulders back, head held high - and nary a glance for the sysadmin he has to pass along the way.

This time, Clu could feel his mouth stretching in a far different expression. _Looks like the game's not over yet, Flynn._

* * *

Kevin considered the kitchen and had the unhappy thought that this would be a lot easier on the Grid.

It wasn't even just the sheer _busy-ness_ of the real world, with all its textures and colors and facades and _things_ , but his fingers itched to press against a surface and simply _search._ A tag query, a usage function match, even just a thumbnail scan ...

"Hey, Tron, you probably know just as much as I do about what these things look like these days -" he called over his shoulder as he approached the first row of drawers. Not that he expected much help from that quarter, but divide and conquer, and for a bachelor, Sam's - house? apartment? what had he called it ... a 'pad'? - was inordinately cluttered. Or maybe Kevin was just too used to the Grid's clean lines and unblemished surfaces, all its functions zipped away until one gave it a simple touch and thought to unfurl ...

He turned on his heels, feeling unaccountably restless; both frustrated and enchanted with his new environment at the same time. Now that the buffer of memory and nostalgia had settled and there were no longer any other distractions, he was belatedly discovering that everything was familiar, and yet, not. Less bulky than the designs and devices of the eighties. Not quite as sleek and understated as the Grid. He kept reaching for the wrong things in the wrong places - interfaces, switches, even _man_ pages at one point - to help him sort out a logical system from the disorder; but he had already run out of drawers and cabinets to pull open and, honestly, the _real_ solution would be to invent some sort of tagging system that could be tracked down no matter where the thing was misplaced - 

Something rattled behind him when he tried to back up for a wider view of the kitchen. He whirled, and barely kept from making a bigger mess when the shallow bowl he had upset nearly upended its hoard of fruit completely with the sudden motion. But the sole escapee - an orange he didn't quite catch - rolled away unheeded when he noticed the tiny figurines nearly hidden in the fruit bowl's shadow, and it was with an oddly Zen moment that he reached out to carefully pick up one of the small plastic toys.

Everything felt distant and buffered. Something that had helped him, on the Grid, when he had first noticed the gray in his hair, when he had had to start subtracting timestamps to remember the time that had passed. But now it just made him feel helpless, as if something else was in control as he turned the figure this way and that, noted the bald spots and the scuff marks and the looseness of the joints, and a shudder worked its way down his spine as he stared at the white-suited figure with its light blue lines and wondered if this was, in any way, like what rectification felt like.

"Tron!" he called, and tried not to wince at how hoarse and desperate he sounded. Setting the vintage figurine down again, he cleared his throat and entreated, "C'mon, man, some help for the needy, here!" But when the program finally stepped into view, gaze fixed just left of center, face as opaque as the mask he had worn till now, Kevin wondered if being confronted with this was any better than the half-familiar, half-alien silence he had been left with before.

Inhale. Exhale.

Well, Tron was already here, it would be ridiculous to ask him to leave again. Squaring his shoulders, he was just beginning to scrape together what he hoped was a passable description of what he was looking for when he was confronted with audio that sounded distinctly ... _small_.

Head tilting, he rounded the counter's edge and slowly homed in on the couch. It went beyond simply readjustment from the odd accoustics of the Grid - whatever speakers were playing sounded flat, _tinny_ , and ... Kevin halted uncertainly when the tune shut off, but when it restarted not a a split-micro later, he was finally able to fish a flat, rectangular device out from between the cushions.

It was like a palm-sized version of one of Encom's touch-surface desks. Shiny and polished, its face was occupied by a colorful background with a prominent dialog box floating on top, declaring 'Alan Bradley' beneath a photo of the same propped in a recliner, asleep and half-slouched, glasses askew, mouth sagged open. Distracted by the screen's resolution and color fidelity, the image was replaced by the message '2 missed calls' before he thought to do anything more - but then the audio looped again, Bradley reappeared in all his undignified technicolor glory, and Kevin smirked before following the on-screen instructions and swiped the virtual slider to one side.

_"Sam, where the hell are you? I know you're not asleep after a night like that and heaven knows I'd rather you were, but we've got a situation breathing down our necks - "_

Ah. So that's what the thing was. Gingerly holding the end emitting Alan's voice closer to his ear, Kevin surveyed the room, attempting to see if he could pick out a relay or base station for the handset. "Sounds just like old times, Alan."

There was a distinctly flabbergasted pause before his old friend spluttered predictably. _"Kevin? Why are you - where's - what're you doing with Sam's cell phone and why do you sound like you're ten feet across the - "_

Kevin pursed his lips thoughtfully as he pulled the - celphone? - away, eyeing its near-symmetrical design while Alan's amusingly Jiminy'd voice continued to natter on. Then, rotating the device, he put it near his head again. "What's a celphone and why is Sam using something by that Finnish upstart? Don't tell me Encom's fallen behind, we've held the patents to stuff like this since the seventies - "

_" - even be wandering around the city when you've just - wait, what? What's this about a Finnish upst - are you talking about Nokia? Why are we talking about - "_

"I'm holding something with their name all over it. Unless it's a clever disguise for Encom's next generation prototype, but to be honest, I hope not because you'll need to fire the design team - "

_"No, we're not firing the design team, and Encom's pulled out of the consumer electronics race since '05 and you're not even CEO anymore - Kevin, why are we even talking? Put Sam on the phone, now!"_

Dropping into the couch and bracing his free arm across its back, Kevin didn't bother suppressing his grin at the real growl in Alan's voice. "Sorry, man. Sam's taken Quorra out for a ride. Want me to take a message?" Blinking at the string of words this response engendered, he whistled. "Time's really put some salt in you, buddy."

 _"Flynn,"_ and Kevin could just _see_ Alan pinching the bridge of his nose, glasses pushed up to his brow-line, and felt his grin soften into fondness at even getting the _chance_ to envision that response again - just before it dropped away altogether at the man's next words. _"Look, Kevin, this is serious, all right? We're talking about Sam's future here - we're talking about his_ freedom _, do you get me? They want to press charges, they want to sue, they want him in_ jail _\- "_

It was, in a way, much like his experience on the Grid - his fondest dreams, mixed with unimaginable nightmares. There were daring exploits of the electronic and real world varieties, skydives off of skyscrapers, an information distribution network more expansive than he had dared to imagine national boundaries and regulations would have allowed. 

And then there were the familiar corporate sharks who had, disappointingly, not died out as a species; who were, even now, circling around a potential kill. "Okay, wait, let me get this straight. Beyond some youthful indiscretions - "

_"What, just minor things like a B &E and violating local airspace?"_

"Does it really count as a B&E if, according to you, he practically owns Encom and if the police already fined and released him after the stunt?" Kevin retorted, instinctively flexing his wrist to remind himself of the smooth roll of prayer beads around his wrist; an inexplicable tag-along when his clothes had been categorically swapped by the laser. Perhaps it was some tagging difference between 'attire' and 'accessory'? "What happened, Bradley? I thought you were the responsible one - "

 _"_ Excuse _me? Are you saying what I think you're saying?"_

"If what you think I'm saying is that I thought anyone under your wing would've been a little less prone to reckless decisions - "

_"Hey, I can only do so much in place of a father who was, may I point out, just as - !"_

"And, what, you were just the next door neighbor? We made you his _godfather_ \- " Kevin snapped back, starting to his feet and pacing past the length of the couch - only to meet the gaze of his dark-suited doppelganger hunched in the shadowed recesses of the apartment. His own face stared stonily back at him, while one corner of the mouth curling in a satisfied smirk.

 _"To hell with you, Flynn! We had to stand in for_ you _so that you could galivinate around in your little Wonderland - "_

Kevin tore his gaze away. Spun shakily, and felt his breath come no easier when he found another all too familiar face waiting for him on the other side. For a moment, with older-Alan's voice in his ear and Alan's too-young face gazing expressionlessly back, he wondered if everything that had happened - Sam, the confrontation with Clu, their escape from the Grid - had simply been a product of his latest sleep cycle.

_" - tell Sam to call me back ASAP. We're done here - "_

Kevin shook himself. "Alan ... _Alan!_ Wait, christ, just ... just hold on a moment, all right ... " He slumped back down onto the couch, shading his eyes from the strengthening sunlight in the room with a hand curled around his brow, elbows braced against his spread knees. "Look, I just ... I meant that I was hoping you would be a good influence, all right?"

_"Don't give me your BS again to get out of - "_

"Jesus christ, Alan, we're talking about my son and the only thing I have left of Jordan!"

Alan shut up. Kevin could hear his own breaths in the sudden silence, rasping in his throat, and he gritted his teeth and consciously held the last one, releasing it in a slow, carefully controlled stream. Inhale ... exhale ... inhale ... exhale ...

_"Fine. What now, then?"_

Kevin scraped his hand down his face and leaned back, eyes closed. "You said the board's basically leveling charges of IP theft? That's usually fines if the other party's got the means to pay up, not jail time."

 _"He has contracts, binding agreements ... standard procedural stuff that everyone down to the lowest intern signs. Stuff that no one except a corporate spy or a consultant or a resigning employee ever worries about - non-compete agreements, trade secrets, IP protection, theft of company property ... Kevin, he didn't just take a copy for his personal use or even to share with his circle of personal buddies for bragging rights. He essentially stole Encom's flagship product and handed it right over to all our competitors. The lawyers aren't going to care for the free software movement or the fact that he wasn't paid to do it. This is their potential excuse to strip him of_ everything _\- and to finally get him out of the board's collective hair, once and for all."_

Kevin could almost _feel_ caches swapping out as he tried to recall strategies he had not used for over a millennia of subjective time - and was keenly reminded, in spite of all his recent experiences, of the allure of the Grid with its lack of lawyers and bureaucracy. "I'm guessing that trying to put a team together that will outdo Encom's litigation group is out of the question."

_"Is that some euphemism for 'I have no clue what the hell I'm doing'?"_

"Then we'll just have to make sure that the lawyers never get involved."

There was a significant pause this time. _"I'm still not convinced you're saying anything different."_

But Kevin could hear the suspicion in his one-time best friend's voice; the suspicion that heralded a grudging willingness to believe if Kevin could talk fast enough. "What if ... " Inhale, exhale. "What if you told Encom you could - _Sam_ could - give them something that will blow this OS12 of theirs right out of the water?"

This time, the pause was long and leaden before Alan said, _"You must be joking. Kevin, you're not going to hand them the - giving them a new_ toy's _not gonna move their sights from Sam - "_

"No, of course not, not the Grid, not the whole thing, anyway." He wanted to get up, stand, move and pace, wave his arms, except he could almost _feel_ the two stares coming from opposite sides, pinning him as surely as any light staff, and he was trying to cobble together a plan in a game he had not played in ten lifetimes, against players he had never met. "But greed, we appeal to their greed. They just lost their cash cow but we're going to give them a golden goose instead, but only if they don't slay it before it can make them all millionaires; they won't be able to resist - "

 _"Kevin, we can't, not in the timespan we have - a third of the board is already here, and it's barely past seven in the morning! This is going to be a witch hunt, we don't have_ time _to plan something on this scale; if we make even one slip - "_

"We don't need to plan it all _now_ , we just need to buy _time_ , Alan. C'mon, you should know how this game's played better than I do by now! For god's sake, they're on version twelve of their OS? Isn't it getting a little long in the tooth? Tell the world this is the final one. No, tell them it's only the _prelude_ of what's to come. We're giving it away because it'll be worthless when we release our next project, it will be _obsolete_ \- "

 _"Jesus christ, are you even listening to yourself, Flynn?"_ Kevin stuttered, halting uncertainly as his rhythm was interrupted, but before he could attempt to reclaim it, Alan continued in an oddly soft tone, _"It's like you'd never left."_

Kevin could feel his forehead wrinkling as he tried to interpret the silence that followed, but before he could manage even an awkward question a sudden flurry of barking had him jerking his head up from its recline.

Marvin's claws scrabbled across the floor as the dog rushed up to the front door, yapping and little stub-tail wagging fit to fall right off. "I think there's someone at the door."

_"Sam?"_

"No, he took his bike. I haven't heard it coming around ... " Kevin rolled back to his feet, treading carefully along the same path the dog had just taken toward the door.

_"Maybe it's an early delivery? Just ignore it - "_

The door rattled. "They're trying to get in."

_"What? You mean someone's trying to break in? Kevin, hang up right now, call - "_

"No, like they've got a key - "

The door swung open.

_"Wait, the only people who have keys are Sam, myself, and - "_

"Marvin - Marvin, down, boy! Hey, Sam! Alan told me you were awake, and I was already on my way to the labs, so I thought I'd drop by earlier rather than later - "

Kevin felt his throat click with a swallow. "Lora?"

_"What - Lora? Wait, I called her, asked her to bring over some women's clothes - "_

The woman had stopped, Marvin hopping excitedly around her heels. Blond hair even lighter now with the grey threaded through it, face and figure rounded and lined by age, it was nevertheless obvious even through time's screen whom he faced - just as she confirmed it with a whispered, "Oh my god ... Kevin?"

_" - but she said she wouldn't be free until the afternoon - I thought I'd have time to explain - "_

Her eyes flicked past his shoulder and what remaining color in her face drained away. The bag that had been slung over her shoulder slipped and landed with a soft _thump_ upon the floor, narrowly missing the dog. Kevin was suddenly aware of a shadow, hovering right on the edge of his periphery ...

Behind him, a slow, ticking growl began to swell.


	8. Honey, I'm Home!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good lord, haha, my apologies to all the wonderful folks who have been faithfully commenting and following this fic. I love you all, I seriously do, and you really do make a difference - I may take forever to post a chapter, but you guys keep it from becoming "never". Thank you so much!
> 
> Sorry, this is more of a stage-setting chapter than a plot-moving one, but I'll get there, promise!

When Sam had been young, witnessing the dawn had always come with a little lurch of panic. It meant broken rules, lectures about poor judgment, even potential groundings depending on what day of the week it was and who was on hand to deliver the reprimand.

When he was older, the dawn had dragged with it a weary finality; it was the signal of a night spent too long partying, on coding, on whatever the hell he was doing except sleeping the sleep of the righteous and responsible, heralding a new day that he would spend half of in bed if he was lucky, or listening to someone else’s disappointment if he was not.

So, no, the dawn and he were not exactly on speaking terms; more often than not, he tried to slink by and pretend that they never passed each other in the hallway. But this once, perhaps, he could acknowledge that he was out and about in its presence, and not be embarrassed to subscribe to every new age platitude and motivational poster lauding its power of renewal in existence.

After all, he had survived a long nightmare to return home, whole and safe, feeling far more settled in his own skin than he could ever remember. Had managed, against all odds, to break an even longer nightmare - discovered his father’s secret, _found_ his father, even brought his father _back_. There was a miracle riding pillion behind him, all but buzzing with excitement and wonder, too overwhelmed to even ask her usual slew of questions and just soaking in everything about the world. Yeah, there were still some issues left, but with the crisp wind in his face and the soft light banishing the world’s harsher edges, they all seemed insignificant and manageable in the face of everything else that had happened …

And then he returned home, and reality woke him with a sharp slap across the face.

 _“ - lotta nerve, buster! And Flynn, don’t you even_ think _about - “_

_“ - what you - Lora, please, just calm down for - !“_

The sounds filtered through as soon as the garage door started rolling up to the ceiling. Voices, high and strident; an insane amount of barking; and a dry, wheezing guffaw, as if someone was having an asthma attack. Quorra’s arms had gone tight and tense around him, but otherwise, she remained just as motionless and mute as he was while his living room was revealed by slow increments.

Marvin was barking hard enough that his little body jumped with each high-pitched yap. Lora stood crouched upon the sofa, a cushion held before her like a shield while the other hand held a - was that his table lamp? - high above her head, ready to cast. His father, looking harried and rumpled and _human_ in a way that Sam had never noticed was missing on the Grid, had both hands up placatingly, swaying to intercept each of her attempts to see around him. Clu was doubled-over as much as his bonds allowed him to be, looking as if he might asphyxiate himself at any moment with his own mirth.

Tron was where the coffee table had been, the furniture now skidded off-kilter, the program sprawled upon his rear with legs akimbo and one hand braced behind him, the other held to one side of his face. He was staring - staring _at_ someone for once, at _Lora_ specifically - eyes so wide and frozen that Sam couldn’t help remembering how Quorra had looked when she had lost her arm, and wondered if programs could crash while in the real world.

“Sam!”

He automatically jerked to attention at Lora’s snap. Biting back a reflexive denial of culpability, he quickly swung off his bike and slid toward the knot of people as if he was approaching the open door of a tiger’s cage. “Okay, okay, just - everyone, just _calm down_ , everything’ll be alright - “

Lora pinned a single, incredulous look on him.

Sam winced sheepishly. “Hey, look, I’m doing the best I can, okay? Just put the weap-my _light_ , just put my light down, and let’s talk it out like … like … adults and stuff.” He could feel himself flushing automatically at her narrowed look, and then felt his face burn even more at the juvenile reaction he had yet to shake in the face of her disapproval. “C’mon, I’m _trying_ here, give me a break,” he finally declared in exasperation.

Lora’s gaze rested on him for a moment longer before swinging to Kevin, and at the man’s soulfully imploring look, she finally rolled her eyes and let her hands drop with something that sounded suspiciously like a disgusted, “Flynns,” muttered beneath her breath.

Sam rocked back on his heels with a long exhale as the woman batted away Kevin’s solicitously extended hand and descended from the couch on her own. Quorra had crouched next to Tron in the meantime, and though there was a quiet one-way murmur going on, Sam couldn’t catch what was actually being said. It was enough, though, to finally get the former security program moving - Quorra straightened and stepped back as Tron pushed himself to his feet.

The program’s head was turned blatantly aside now, rather than angled at its usually subtle slant, gaze completely averted. Sam could see a wide, red mark just beginning to bloom on the left cheek - he suspected it would correspond roughly with the width of Lora’s knuckles. Between that and the scabbed over cut on his brow, Tron was beginning to look like a victim of battery and abuse.

“Christ.” Sam rubbed a hand over his face. “So, what the hell happened?”

“I was brainstorming with Bradley on how to keep you out of jail and - “

“I came over with the clothes like Alan asked and this _imposter_ \- “

In the background there was a distinctly amused and unimpressed snort, and Sam stabbed a finger in Clu’s general direction without bothering to look. “Don’t you start,” he growled through a building headache. “Wait, hold on, what’s this about jail? That’s supposed to be past tense - “

“The board’s come up with some new scheme to remove you and Bradley’s trying to work damage control - “

“Flynn, I think that can wait for the thirty seconds it takes for you to explain why someone is impersonating a thirty-year-old version of my husband - not to mention _you_ \- and then tried to _kiss me_ \- “

Sam’s brain tripped over itself. “He - Tron - what?” Too baffled to even wonder at the sudden, stoic silence from his father’s corner, he stared at the program. “Do you even know what a kiss is?”

There was a splutter from Lora’s direction, but it was Quorra, standing just behind Tron’s shoulder, who unexpectedly piped up with a scoffing, “Even I know what a kiss is.”

Feeling strangely unmoored, Sam asked faintly, “Why do you know that?”

Kevin cut in with sudden haste. “Hey, even the classics talked about people kissing - “

“And when I asked what it was, Flynn showed me,” Quorra finished brightly.

Sam choked. Lora’s arm swung with unerring accuracy. Kevin staggered beneath the cushion’s impact, both arms raised, voice emerging meek and muffled. “It was just a demo!”

Giddy and half-hysterical, Sam asked, “What, did you give a demo to Tron too?”

Half his hair standing on end from the cushion’s swipe, Kevin straightened with a wary glance Lora’s way and answered with as much dignity as he could muster, “Of course not. He learned it from Yori.”

“Yori,” Lora echoed, tight and controlled. “And who is Yori?”

“Oh, well … ancient history. Way before Jordan. All the way back in ‘82, in fact … “

Movement distracted Sam from his father’s mumbled prevarications. Tron had canted his head toward the conversation, displaying an atypical interest, and there was just the subtlest _lean_ of his body toward Lora that, at any other time, Sam would have interpreted as threat. Except … Sam had to swallow around suspicion, congealing thick and heavy in his middle.

Tron had, apparently, learned the behavior from another program. A program written by another user, back at the original Encom. And just what were the odds that programs, who seemed to inherit the most intrinsic traits of their users, wouldn’t have also inherited this most basic of connections … ?

He was saved from further metaphysical headaches by the rumble of an approaching car and sudden screech of tires just outside, but found himself tensing all the same. True, he had no neighbors, but the wharf was not _completely_ abandoned, particularly on a weekday morning. Wincing, he was already trying to line up the most palatable explanation for the scene in his living room - an oddly-attired Clu, duct-taped to a chair; a furious Lora who had been obviously assaulting a much-chastened Kevin; a battered and shell-shocked Tron, and Quorra clad in his ill-fitting sweats - before relaxing with a grateful wheeze when he turned to find it was only Alan, already stumbling out of his car, not even bothering to turn off the ignition.

“Oh thank god, Lora, you haven’t killed him yet - “

“What?” Lora said, low and dangerous. “You know something about what’s going on?”

Alan grimaced, approaching his wife in much the same posture as all the males had done - hands raised, head down, utterly cowed. “Uhm, yes dear, but I promise it was just a few hours ago - you hardly missed anything … “ he tried gamely.

“Aren’t you supposed to be talking the board down right now?” Kevin interjected, bemused.

Alan winced again and glared. “I pulled the fire alarm.”

“Bradley,” Kevin said, looking delighted. “I’m impressed.”

“Well, _I’m_ not,” Alan shot back. “False alarm penalties aside, I shouldn’t have even needed - !“

They all jumped when Lora clapped sharply and declared, “Boys!” Leveling a glare on all those present, she had only to command, “Alan Bradley … “ before Sam’s godfather sighed and stepped in.

“Sam, why don’t you and Quorra see about getting Clu changed into something else. Flynn, time for iteration two of your story … “

* * *

“ … drove us back. We secured Clu, I gave Bradley the download, and that’s where we are now.”

“I see.”

Kevin’s brows arched as he eyed Lora eyeing him back, and Alan could feel it coming; that sixth sense that went with having a life partner for nigh on thirty years stiffening his spine until he could barely cringe when the man finally turned to him and beamed. “There, see, Bradley? She _did_ take it better than - “

_Slap!_

“I’ll … uh, get breakfast started,” Alan muttered beneath his breath, hastily pushing himself out of his seat.

_“Kevin Flynn, you - you selfish, idiot bastard! Do you even know what you’ve - ”_

Sighing, Alan deliberately loosened his shoulders as his wife’s voice fell behind him and eyed the rest of the bodies clustered nearby. Sam was right, the place _was_ feeling a little crowded by now. As he pondered the probability of passing the ‘newcomers’ - and any strange behavioral tics - off as foreigners with odd customs if his neighbors got nosy, he nodded toward the newly secured Clu, now clad in a t-shirt and another set of sweatpants, feet incongruously bare beneath them. “You got him?”

“Yeah, though I’m starting to run out of duct tape,” Sam grouched, and when he glared at Clu, the administrator gave an eerily similar glare back.

Like father, like son, except with some binary code and two missing decades in between. Alan had to suppress the shudder that wanted to creep down his spine. “Okay, great, I’m going to get some food started then since pure caffeine’s not gonna cut it for much longer,” he said as he began herding Quorra and Tron before him. “Maybe you can start thinking about some other ways to secure him? Don’t think we can just keep him taped to a chair all the time.”

“Why not?” Sam grumbled, but was already stumping toward his work area and dragging out his toolbox as Alan finally segregated the other programs into the attached kitchen.

Alan considered his two charges - an attentive, obviously curious Quorra, and a distant, but at least obedient Tron. They were all lucky that it was Lora’s turn to be in Seattle this week and was available to take a look at the laser, but until that was repaired, the programs were stuck here.

In which case, first things first. “So, have either of you ever used a stove?” he asked as he rolled up his sleeves.

It turned out things needed to be even more basic than that. He gained a fresh handful of white hairs when Quorra picked up a knife for the first time, and he discovered that ‘hardcoded sharp edges’ were a completely new concept. Tron had followed his defrosting instructions to the letter, and Alan had been forced to pause, bemused, as he listened to his own voice with the odd, rumbling undertones instruct the microwave to cook “three minutes, medium power” while the program stared expectantly at the inert box.

Ingredients and recipes had been an exercise in frustration until Quorra exclaimed, “Oh, it’s a makefile!” and even Tron’s usually impassive mien perked up a bit at the epiphany. Heat had been another gray-inducing notion - at least the sullen red glow of the stove was a warning that the programs could appreciate, from Quorra’s descriptions of the light-limned weapons of the Grid. But the possibility of damage from a visibly unchanged pan that had been sitting atop a burner was a grievance that had been taken on an inordinately personal level. He could have sworn he heard ‘virus’ muttered at one point, but was too exhausted by then to try and chase down the context.

By the end of the experience, six omelettes-cum-scrambles were sitting steaming on the counter, two half-burnt and one slightly undercooked. Alan felt like he had pulled two all-nighters instead of merely one, and wondered how he could have ever been naive enough to think that no one was more difficult to handle than Sam on the cusp of his teenaged years. But he had gotten to know the two a little better, learned a bit more about their world, and maybe even started feeling a bit of wistfulness for having missed experiencing the Grid for its own sake, rather than just as a safety net for Kevin.

It sounded like Lora was finally winding down. Their voices had dropped into unintelligibility, with Kevin’s tone grudging and resigned to Lora’s low-key anxiety and exasperation. When Alan saw his wife reach out to pull their long-lost friend into a fierce hug, he nudged Quorra. “Why don’t you go let everyone know that breakfast’s ready?”

“Okay,” she acknowledged promptly, and Alan couldn’t help the curl of his lips at her enthusiasm. It had been a long time since Sam had grown up, and he had forgotten how much an innocent’s perspective made everything new and fresh again.

Alan felt his mood take a dip just as abruptly though, when he gave a sidelong glance toward his remaining pupil. He still wasn’t sure what he was most disturbed by - Tron’s uncanny resemblance to his younger self, or the obvious mental imbalance - but he had made his best efforts to reach out to the program. Quorra had hardly needed any encouragement at all, but Tron had shown even less initiative than the standard stable of union workers, and had carried out his assigned tasks with a confusing slew of hot-cold signals. Sometimes Alan thought the program could barely stand to be in his presence, while at others, he could have sworn Tron could hardly wait for his next few words.

“Hey, stop slouching so much,” he prompted with a gentle slap to Tron’s back, and the program startled visibly, gaze meeting his for a rare, fleeting moment before sliding off-center again. But at least the spine had obediently straightened and the shoulders pulled back; in fact, the pose looked almost militaristic in its squared-off intensity, and Alan snorted. “You never do things by halves, do you? Come on,” he shoved a plate into each of Tron’s hands, “let’s go set the table.”


	9. Intermission: What you don't know can (and is totally willing to) kill you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wilful ignorance is all the rage, didn't you know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, sorry, it's not a real chapter! But man, people were so awesome in responding to the last chapter, that I felt really bad that I wouldn't be working on the next one in a timely manner due to some personal projects. So, here, hopefully people will find this fun ... this was written almost since the beginning of The Sea, but I decided I couldn't fit it anywhere and so it became an AU of an AU.
> 
> Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments! I'm going to try to find time in the next week to respond.

_"What!"_

Everyone froze, and several pairs of eyes twitched toward the closed door of the bedroom.

_"Every month? A whole week!"_

Sam winced. Kevin abruptly looked engrossed in the cereal's list of ingredients. Alan began inching toward the door, one hand sneaking into the jacket pocket where he had slipped his keys. Tron looked around and began to tentatively get to his feet. "Quorra ... she is distressed - "

"Alan Bradley!"

Alan hunched his shoulders with a grimace as his wife burst from the room, face set as she marched up to him. "Yes, dear?" he answered meekly.

"If I may, gentlemen, I would like a word with my husband," she declared, already marching Alan off before they could even manage a smattering of consenting noises. The senior board member went with the woebegone air of those walking to their death sentence.

All was still and silent at the departure of Hurrican Lora, before Tron asked cautiously, "Is Quorra in need of aid?"

"Nothing that males need to get in the middle of, man. Let the women-folk take care of it," Kevin pontificated from behind the cereal box.

"What, none of those books ever talked about ... uh, you know, that time of month?" Sam prodded, squinting suspiciously at his father.

"That time of month?" Tron echoed, and was roundly ignored.

"Of course they did. I'm an equal opportunity employer! I made sure she had a well rounded education. There were plenty of women's subjects in the classics - I'm sure Pride and Prejudice mentioned something."

Sam squinted even harder. "I read one-and-a-half chapters of that thing in school and even I could tell it wasn't Grey's Anatomy."

"Well ... " Kevin began before harrumphing. "She must have misunderstood me. But it doesn't matter, Lora's here. She'll set Quorra straight."

"I do not understand what Quorra's interfacing preference has to do with the time of the month," Tron asked suspiciously while Sam covered his face with a groan.


	10. Apples and Oranges

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, major thanks to Grey and Winzler for helping to get me over the hurdle of those last few paragraphs.
> 
> And I am, like, the worst author for responding to comments, but I swear I save each and every one of the email notices that send them to me 'cause I love them all. Thank you everyone who kudos'ed and wrote, you all brighten my days immensely. :)

Quorra tilted her head, tracking the vectors and distances as dots whirled around a central mass in varying degrees of haste or stateliness. "This - " she tapped the bright yellow ball upon the screen, " - is the Sun," she finished, pointing blindly over her shoulder toward the point-source of light and heat in the sky.  _Average distance of 92,955,807 miles, or one astronomical unit (AU). Do not stare at directly without protective gear._

"Yup," Sam responded without bothering to look up from his communications device.

"And this - " another tap, on the third dot from the designated sun, " - is us."  _Average diameter of 7,918 miles. A little over 70% of the surface covered by water. Gravity is distributed with spherical symmetry in an inverse-square gradient._

"Ee-yup."

"And all of this is ... ?"

A single flick of his eyes up to see her fingers pressed against the empty areas between the spheres, and then his gaze went down again. "That's space."

_Undefined medium._ Quorra squinted. There seemed to be tiny prickles of light suspended in the black - like handfuls of bits, hovering too far away to have individual edges and vertices rendered. "What's  _in_ the space?"

Sam's fingers paused, the incessant  _tack-tack-tack_ of the virtual keyboard finally ceasing. "It's space. There's nothing there, that's why it's space."

"So, it is the user Outlands?"

Sam groaned, levering himself from the couch to lean over her shoulder, one hand braced against the table as he pointed with the other at the same areas she had just indicated. Disappointingly, no new data unfurled with the motion though the action looked commanding enough, and she had to depend on his voice-over alone. "No, it's  _space_ ... "

The user method of data integration was haphazard, but she appreciated the new option of direct experimentation. Going through Flynn's libraries had stocked her with a general overview of the user world, but for every line she had registered, a hundred other details came swarming with it when she actually experienced it directly. For instance, liquid was just as wet in the user world, but could not sustain a program - a  _person_ \- on its own, and it came with a bewildering panoply of case-dependent properties. Colors, flavors,  _viscosity_ ... even energy - or, ‘electricity’ - had its own man pages on every appliance as to appropriate handling methods when water was present. Alan had looked on the verge of an involuntary shutdown when the toaster had malfunctioned and she had tried to provide it with more energy via water collected in a pot.

" ... no air, so anyone who wants to go up there - "

"Up? I thought you said it was all around the Earth."

"Yeah, okay, we're - I mean,  _Earth_ is floating  _in_ space, but the way  _we're_ oriented now, it's  _up_ \- "

Even the very act of passing from one room to another had been fraught with hidden variables. There were uneditable procedures called 'physics' involved, which users had cleverly manipulated by fashioning door knobs and latches, and even something called 'etiquette', which apparently was a form of user-negotiated permissions, because Sam's reaction had been one of unequivocal rejection when she had tried to go into the bathroom to wash her hands while he was showering.

" - have to ride a shuttle - "

"What's a shuttle?"

"It's like a special plane. It's made to go out into space, and it's the only thing that can get a person above the atmosphere - "

"So space is like a user Outlands."

There was a long pause and then Sam sighed. "Yes," he agreed in a defeated monotone. "Space is like a user Outlands."

Surprisingly, the most difficult part of operating in the user world now was  _purpose_ . While, as an ISO, she was no stranger to determining her own goals, still, there had always been a vector she could choose to follow or strike away from according to her own internal logic. Initially, it was simply to learn and adapt, to become a contributing member of the growing community of Arjia. Then to help protect it, and when it fell, to save what - and whom - she could. And when even that proved futile, to wait, to gather data, to be ready for the right inflection point upon which she might help to break Clu’s hold. But now …

Now, there was still no Arjia. No dictatorship anymore, either. In fact, not even a Grid, really, suspended as it was - Sam and Alan had made only two trips back to the arcade in the past week, and the second visit was only so that Lora could scan the laser.

The first, Sam had admitted, was to make a backup before sending the Grid into hibernation. He had looked uncertain, voice hesitant, when he had told her, and it was only later she realized that he thought she might be sad.

To be honest, she felt relieved. The Grid was finally safe - frozen and secure. There would be time and no less than three users now to queue up a proper list of actions to set things right again.

She still collected data. The task had been intrinsic to her core, even when she had been new and freshly instantiated, and it would be no different now in spite of her vastly changed circumstances. Still, she had not paid much attention to how she tagged the information before, when a focused purpose had always provided a clear context. Now, numerous categories were bare of associations, unlinked when all previous goals had been rendered irrelevant.

‘Food’ had been re-categorized under ‘survival’, when previously, it had been merely a user indulgence. ‘Survival’ itself no longer encompassed strategy and tactics, but had withered down to the most basic actions needed to maintain the physical shell, not to guard its integrity. ‘Kicking butt’, as Sam had described offensive capabilities, was to now be strictly defensive, and even then, only certain circumstances made permanent injuries to the other party acceptable. What constituted ‘permanent injuries’ was already ambiguous enough, but the cases Sam described in which violence was permitted seemed to be a highly restricted subset of what other user broadcasts were claiming - a conflict which neither Sam or Kevin had been able to satisfactorily resolve yet.

And then there were tags like ‘job’, which apparently meant  _nearly_ the same as a job to a program - a task that was their responsibility to execute - but which, like everything else user, had an entire array of hidden definitions that were only uncovered through multiple interviews. A ‘job’ was not the same as ‘purpose’ according to Alan, and yet the determination of one’s purpose could - and should - lead to one’s job, in Kevin’s view. Sam, meanwhile, had physically cringed and dodged the question, claiming, “Sorry, Q, that’s  _definitely_ not my specialty.”

His claims notwithstanding, Sam seemed to be working awfully hard to keep the job he insisted he didn’t have. That first day after the impromptu breakfast had been consumed, Alan, Sam, and Kevin had climbed up to the loft to carry on a furtive discussion, pointedly out of the rest of their hearing ranges.

While their voices had risen and fallen, discontent and placating by turn, Lora had surveyed the remaining programs and finally beckoned Quorra over. “Let’s clean up.”

Quorra learned about detergents, dishwashers, and sanitation. She learned that Lora was a patient user with well-ordered thought processes, and that they were able to fall immediately into a cooperative rhythm once they started working. She learned that Lora was wary of Rinzler and Clu, which Quorra approved of, and did nothing to change.

And once they were done, the other users finished their conference, and all trooped back down to the ground floor. “Need to head back into the fray now,” Alan had reported to Lora, giving her a brief kiss on the cheek as he passed on his way to his vehicle. Sam had reappeared in a different set of clothes; ones he was not accustomed to, from the way he reflexively plucked at the collar and occasionally rolled his shoulders. “Gotta go into the office too,” he’d admitted to Quorra as he shrugged into his usual jacket and tapped the helmet down on his head. “Make sure things don’t get too crazy ‘round here, ‘kay?”

Quorra now knew that the button-down shirt and khakis Sam had changed into was his concession to ‘office wear’, though he stubbornly retained his leather jacket and still refused a tie, citing, “Alan, dude, don’t you think it’s gonna make them more suspicious if I suddenly turned into an office clone? Or are you hoping they’ll be so distracted laughing that they won’t notice us pulling a fast one on them?”

No one was laughing on the news channels that Kevin flipped through on a daily basis.

_“ - startling announcement, as the heir to Encom International finally steps up to the plate - “_

_“ - have to remember, Dave, that he was a veritable prodigy before he burned out at Caltech, and he could very well have the chops to pull off what - “_

_“ - stock continues to see broad fluctuations following Encom’s astonishing move last week - “_

_“ - surprise that no one - not even these so-called experts - knows what to make of the company’s claims - “_

The user spent most early evenings on the couch, watching them. Sometimes, he was so still, if it wasn’t for the fact that his eyes were open, Quorra would have thought he was meditating instead.

It was obvious Kevin had a purpose now. Even when Sam had appeared on the Grid, while Kevin had become energized, he still lacked the  _focus_  that he had seemed to achieve only while ‘knocking against the sky’. But now he combed the news sites fanatically, drove Sam to distraction with his questions and ideas and advice, pestered Alan endlessly the times the other user dared to show up … it was what she remembered of the original Flynn, when she used to know him only as a far-off figure. With an easy smile always quick to appear, he had moved with the indolent confidence of complete command, and the ripples of his influence were obvious in any crowd he strode through, whether he was actively using his user powers or not.

Now, the only time she ever saw him falter, was when he girded himself to interact with Rinzler.

In the day cycle, when the news and talk shows were still quiet, Kevin seemed to have delegated a particular hour to interacting with the basic. Without fail, at 9:00 AM PST, he would track down the recalcitrant program and attempt to engage him.

‘Attempt’, because sometimes Rinzler responded, sometimes he didn’t, and even if he did, the responses were usually near-monosyllabic, designed more to end a conversation than to continue it. For all that Kevin insisted on calling him ‘Tron’, it was obvious that Tron was only a part of what was present, and Quorra always made sure she was nearby. 

She remembered the original Tron too, and while Flynn may have found himself again, the basic had most certainly not.

Sometimes he was terse and tense, so obviously on edge that even Kevin stumbled for words, giving up the pretense of conversation altogether and simply talking to fill the silence. Sometimes, he simply appeared … distracted. Face blank, as if he had slipped into standby, or brow furrowed, as if all available resources were occupied.

She could see him watching her, in that sidelong way of his. That signature tilt of his head, never quite in-line, except she could finally see beneath the mask, and note how his eyes darted from her to Kevin to Clu to Marv … anything that moved, and always on center mass. Center mass, not the face, because in a fight the face could lie, but the body and limbs could not. 

Here, neither Tron nor Rinzler had a purpose, and if she hadn’t been able to retrieve memories of programs falling before him, she might have pitied his obvious confusion. She didn’t know what Kevin was hoping to accomplish with his rambling attempts to engage the basic, but if Rinzler ever had an epiphany, she didn’t think it would be because of the user.

Of course, there was one other who was as they were; trapped within the confines of Sam’s home and no discernible purpose yet in the user world. Only, his chains were a little more literal.

Sam had carried through on his threat in spite of Alan’s bemused exclamations, and there was now a rather lengthy daisy-chain of interlocked loops made from zip-ties securing the administrator. One end was anchored around an exposed pipe in a corner near the garage door, while the other had been attached to Clu’s ankle. Quorra had initially been skeptical of the slender-looking threads until Sam had let her attempt to break one of the loops herself. “Look, unless he manages to chew his foot off or gets a hold of YouTube, he’s not getting out of those,” Sam had smirked before she demanded an explanation for YouTube. 

Ten hours later she experienced her first involuntary shut down, and Sam had to explain that sleep was not just optional anymore, and neither could it be held off indefinitely with regular energy inputs unless it was ‘Red Bull’, except that he would probably be thrown in a padded cell if he ever let her get her hands on that much caffeine. Like the injunctions against violence, the YouTube did not seem to support his conclusions, and she was forced to also flag the supposedly contraband substance for later review.

But where Clu was concerned, she took no chances. She watched the YouTube away from him, as Sam had suggested. Clu had spent the first day pacing the length of his chain, sneering at their primitive methods, their indecisiveness, their lack of planning and carry-through. The second and third days had seen an uneasy peace settle over the limited space, as Clu was forced to learn the operational rules of the user world along with the rest of them. By the fourth, they had settled into an unofficial armistice, and now, Clu watched the TV from his makeshift bedding in the corner - and watched the rest of  _them_ just as avidly when the TV was off or turned to less entertaining programs. Sometimes, Quorra considered uneasily that while he had no privacy while chained as he was in the main room, neither did they as they talked and moved through the same space.

Clu’s plans had failed, the Grid and the user world out of his immediate reach, but he had the same look Kevin had, when he was seized by a project. He had  _focus_ ; had, if she were honest with herself, never lost it, not the way Kevin had. She had thought that he would no longer have a purpose, but perhaps that was incorrect - his purpose had remained. It was merely his strategy that had shifted.

And so, late one night, as she regarded Kevin and the eerily similar profile just beyond him and their twinned expressions of rapt concentration reflected in the television’s cool blue light, she was forced to consider that she may have more in common with Rinzler now than her mentor of a thousand cycles.

Five minutes later, she somehow managed to miss the rumble of Sam’s return, because she jumped at the touch upon her back where she was hunched over in a lower cabinet. When she banged her head against its edging, she clapped her hands over the momentary pain and loosed a stream of words that had drawn Sam’s eyebrows nearly into his hairline when she finally looked up.

“Okay, you know what, you’re not allowed to watch late-night programming on TV anymore. I don’t care what Dad says - there’s educational, and then there’s educational. What the heck are you doing?”

He waved a hand over the tools and hardware arrayed around her - everything that she had moved out of the cabinet to burrow inside, though she had taken care to lay them out logically so that she could return them all in proper order - before his eyes caught on something. He bent down, picking up a dusty plastic case with a neat row of tiny screwdrivers inside. “Huh, so that’s where that went.”

She leaned back on her heels. “Looking for the discs.”

He glanced up. “Uhm, why?” 

Because she missed its weight. The security of it in her dock, and in her hand. “Kevin wanted to examine them,” she said instead, borrowing from Sam’s own suite of methods for dealing with questions he didn’t want to answer.

Sam’s brow knit and then he sank into a crouch before her with a sigh. “I stuck them up in the loft, at the top of my closet. Look,” he began, voice dropping conspiratorially as he tossed the case back into the cupboard after a glance over his shoulder. “Alan talked up a storm and bought us some time. My Boy Scout act ain’t fooling anyone, but nobody’s willing to call me on it - yet. If we can deliver something ... if we can deliver what Alan promised, nobody will  _ever_  call me on it.”

Quorra absently nudged the case over to the corner she had originally found it in. “Can you deliver what Alan promised?” she asked carefully.

Sam bit his lip; scrubbed a hand through his hair, and met her eyes with a sober gaze. “Actually, you’re included in that ‘we’ if you’re willing to help. We’re gonna need all the help we can get, and Alan’s got a learning curve to beat where the Grid’s concerned. He’s on the line as much as I am now … he’s put his head on the chopping block right next to mine to get us the space we need. And maybe that doesn’t mean as much to you, but … we were kind of a good team on the Grid, and I thought - “

She flexed her hands against her bent knees, and suddenly, they didn’t seem to crave the hard edge of a two-pi-radian curve anymore. “So this is a job?”

Sam’s gaze turned sidelong, as he frequently did now when she asked an unexpected question. She was beginning to learn that he did this whenever he was suspicious about her motivations, and the possible effects of his answer. “Uhm, yeah ... I guess so?”

Quorra grinned. “When do we start, boss?”

* * *

To say that she had been appalled when she laid eyes on the laser for the first time in twenty years would have been an understatement.

Even now, thinking back upon that moment, Lora could feel the pressure ballooning in her chest. In the laser’s poor, shattered form, she could suddenly see -  _feel_  - all the terrible things that had been hovering underneath everything that Kevin had told her, but which had still remained only words, until now. She had berated him, she had hugged him, she had, on the surface, mourned and accepted the tragedy of the last two decades.

But that night, as she had breathed in stale, dusty air and gingerly picked a chipped plastic L-bracket from a shower of pieces on the floor, she could feel tears pricking hot and angry behind her eyes. Because she had recognized it as  _the_ shim, the makeshift hack she had installed twenty years and three months ago after a sleepless night of troubleshooting; how it had, at the time, felt like both a triumph over and a concession to the alignment issues she had not had the liberty of correcting properly if she wanted to meet project deadlines. That she would never get a chance to correct properly.

The digitizing project was her first major breakthrough after receiving her doctorate, and she would never have known about it but for a tragic accident. It had been stolen from her by one of her closest friends, and then it had kidnapped him in turn, stealing half his life and impacting countless others. It was the bridge to something amazing, to something terrifying, to something that, in her weaker moments, she wondered if she wouldn’t have been more content to leave alone and unknown than to face questions that used to spark wars between nations and religions. Still did, in some parts of the world.

And then she would wake up to a new morning. Or she would see Kevin. Or see Sam, or Quorra, or Clu,  _her_  Alan, the  _other_  Alan, or even little Marv napping wherever he happened to fall over because he was over-excited by all the new people suddenly filling the apartment … and she would take a deep breath and break out her laptop and the nostalgia of looking over old designs would be rightly tempered by amazement that they had managed as much as they had on the technology of that time.

“Careful, you’re starting to get more wrinkles than me.”

Lora started as a shadow loomed over the lip of her glasses and a touch tried to smooth the crease that had formed between her brows. Which only made her deepen it in unintentional defiance when she mock-scowled at her husband. “Not at the rate you’re collecting them, dealing with this circus.”

She felt a touch of remorse when he didn’t fire back a retort as expected, but attempted a crooked grin that was ruined by a wince. The evening had only just settled into full darkness, and already there was the tiny little downturn at the corners of his mouth, the squint that had nothing to do with the prescription of his glasses, the deeper shadows outlining a jaw held too tight and the hundred-and-one tells that usually only appeared right before he was ready to call it a night. She dropped the banter and nudged the chair next to her out for him. “Hey, take a load off.”

“I don’t look  _that_ bad,” he frowned, straightening an already-straight posture into something almost militant.

“No, but I know you and you shouldn’t have to get to the point of ‘that bad’ before I can tell you’re getting ‘that bad’. Now, sit  _down_ ,” she coaxed with a tug on his sleeve.

Frowning even harder, he folded his frame down reluctantly, and this time, Lora didn’t bother hiding her grin at the little-boy petulance that didn’t manage to cover the relieved sag of his body into the seat. “Such a charmer,” she teased gently, rubbing her thumb over the scowl lines in his cheek, and he snorted even as they melted away obediently beneath her touch.

“Hey, it worked on you, didn’t it?” he waggled his brows.

“Feeling better already, I see,” she jibed back, grin widening as she let her hand drop upon his knee and give it a comforting squeeze. “Are the kids all staying out of trouble?”

“For a given definition of it,” Alan rolled his eyes, laying his hand atop hers and absently running his thumb across the back of her wrist. “I think I’m happy to stay out of things for now as long as there are no screaming, explosions, or other sounds indicating some sort of calamity.” A brief pause, and then he added with a disturbed air, “And as long as it’s not too quiet. That usually leads to something in the former categories.”

“Hmm, that sounds familiar. I believe the context had been the board. And interns. And Sam. And - “

“Hey, I’m allowed to recycle my gripes,” Alan protested to her laugh, before his gaze flicked sideways and he arched a brow. “Wait, is that the code to the laser?”

Her own brows rose at the surprise in his voice and she glanced in the same direction to see the familiar white-on-black terminal interface; nothing remarkable. “Yeah. Why? I said I was working on it.”

“But it was all hardware damage, just to the laser itself - I thought the primary processing had been moved to an external unit? Shouldn’t you be looking at technical drawings instead?“

“Yeah, you can thank God and the last design iteration for that, because I don’t know what I would’ve done if we had had to try and port all the code to a modern processor. Probably moved to Tibet,” Lora concluded dryly, using her free hand to tap the page-down key, casually scrolling through the programming. The displayed module was but one of over a hundred comprising the body of the digitizer’s primary functions, and it alone was already thousands of lines of code. Just contemplating the scope of it now both made her head ache and put her in awe of her younger self, who had dealt with it all without the benefit of modern development kits and debuggers. “But Quorra did a number on the laser. I’m almost beginning to think it’s easier to just scrap it; rebuild it from whatever spare parts we can track down. But if we end up having to use some modern equivalents, I need to refresh my memory on the software drivers and interfaces and let’s not even mention that we didn’t even have true  _classes_  at the time and everything was basically just a step up from machine code - “

“And what you really want to do is to upgrade the whole danged thing,” Alan interrupted with a knowing smirk.

She couldn’t help feeling a little bloom of affection at his jaunty, too-sure assessment, even as she retorted, “Hey, don’t forget you’re an engineer too, Mister. How long has that basement entertainment center been a ‘project’? I think by the time you finish all the upgrades there, we won’t need it anymore because someone will have invented a full-sensory immersion pod.”

“That’s not the engineer in me, that’s just old-age fussiness and OCD,” Alan deflected as he leaned over to peck her on the forehead and pushed himself to his feet. “Speaking of old age,” he groaned, stretching, “I’m going to go soak for a bit before bed. You want anything while I’m up?”

“No, thanks,” she sighed, letting him go and glumly facing the screen and its endless march of text again. “I’m going to take a break soon anyway. At the pace I’m currently going, it’ll be Christmas by the time I even make it out of the beam management protocols.”

His face creased with sympathy and he gave her shoulder a light squeeze. “If it needs the time, it needs the time. I complain about ‘the kids’, but there’s nothing that a bit of wrist-slapping and duct tape hasn’t fixed yet. So don’t feel like you have to burn the midnight oil for this, all right?”

“Roger,” she smiled wanly, giving his hand a squeeze in return. “But, you know, old-age fussiness and OCD ....”

Alan chuckled and pulled away. “You can’t hide from me! I know that’s just a facade you wear for my sake.“

Lora only shook her head with a hidden smile as his steps faded up the stairs. The familiar peace of their neighborhood crept in once more, even the background hum of the kitchen appliances next to the living area barely audible. But her mind stubbornly refused to focus again after the tete-a-tete, and she finally sighed, reaching out to close the laptop lid.

Except that Alan’s words circled back around through her head, and she hesitated for a breath before moving instead to shut down only the terminal window. Navigating through the portable hard drive onto which she had copied all the data she could scrape out from the digitizer, she located a small cluster of files, hovered over one in particular, and with her heart in her throat and two clicks, unpacked and opened it.

When  _The Matrix_ had been released, she had nearly gotten Alan and herself kicked out of the theater with how she had snickered and snorted through the movie’s treatment of computers and the digital experience. She couldn’t help but reflect on it now, though, as she scanned the document that was unfurling upon her screen - even as she skipped through the first fifty pages, she could see the status bar flickering madly away at the bottom.  _Loading page 304 … 356 … 413 …_

Once upon a time, she was a version of Neo, and could translate chunks of what was on her screen now on the fly. Just like him, she would be reading the very  _essence_  of something, the bits that made it what it was - the elements it was comprised of, the molecular bonds that kept everything together, the arrangement that made it an orange instead of a peel and water and some scattered fibrous mass.

_I know that’s just a facade you wear for my sake …_

And what she was reading now was a  _person_ . It was Neo’s digital world, brought into real life. It was  _her husband_ , except not; an alien being created here on Earth, wearing Allen’s appearance like a mask and suit, and currently she was staring  _right into the soul_ of it - of  _him_  ...

She shuddered. “You’re beginning to sound like Kevin,” she muttered, before determinedly shaking off the fey mood with a sniff. She ticked idly through two more pages, already leaning back in preparation to close everything down, before something new caught her eye.

It looked like a comment line. Except that a translation buffer dump - the (barely) human-readable version of what all the information looked like just before the laser attempted to recreate it in the real world - didn’t have comments, it was just pure data. It would have taken forever to wade through it -  _Loading page 793 … 826 …_  - to find debug output, and so all comments were usually piped into a separate comment file with line references.

_//----------------_   
_//CLU2_   
_//!_   
_//!_   
_//!_

Pushing her glasses atop her head and leaning close with narrowed eyes, Lora paged down with more deliberation, until she found what seemed to be an end delimiter, sandwiching the blocks of data in between.

She located an identical header on page 243. Page 556. Page 603. Sometimes the data in between the delimiters would also be commented out - and she refused to think about the implications now, at this time of the night, to comment out something that made up a  _person_  - but more often than not, they had been left intact with just those inexplicable bookends in place. She wondered what routine could have possibly been responsible for them, if this was some hack Kevin had put in after he had appropriated the laser, except that he had never been interested in machine-level coding, in coming anywhere near clumsy hardware that occupied a mundane reality. It was always about the far more elegant and malleable higher-level languages, manipulating the virtual spaces that were limited only by the imagination - 

_//----------------_   
_//TRONTRONTRONTRONTRONTRONTRONTRONTRON_   
_//TRONTRONTRONTRONTRONTRONTRONTRONTRON_   
_//TRONTRONTRONTRONTRONTRONTRONTRONTRON_   
_//_   
_//_   
_//_

She had already paged past it before her subconscious caught up, and she almost over-shot it again in her haste to return. She could hear the hiss of breath she pushed out through her teeth as she stared at the new header, but could only feel a numb chill creep through her chest.

Something had labeled bits of Tron in the translation buffer. All but shouted it out, in spite of  _all_  the data being Tron already ... or, should have been. Because she was just beginning to realize that ‘CLU2’ maybe wasn’t some obscure acronym or error code, but was maybe ‘Clu 2’, because she had listened to Kevin’s story but hadn’t really  _thought_  about what it was he’d said. That he had created Clu, a second Clu, a version named after the program he had used to try and hack the MCP. And that this Clu 2.0 had revolted, had trapped Kevin, had ‘repurposed’ -  _rewritten_  - other programs to carry out his will. That Tron had been  _remade_ into Rinzler, in what she had thoughtlessly framed in her mind as some sort of brainwashing analoguen- like some hypnotist’s trick - but as she began to scroll faster and faster through the file, realized it actually meant whole tracts of someone’s  _being_  had simply been  _overwritten_  upon the whim of a program …

_SNAP_

Lora’s eyes felt strained and dry before she realized she was staring at empty air, and belatedly retrieved her hands from where they had slapped the laptop’s lid down. A tiny amber LED pulsed on and off in the unit’s corner, indicating that it had automatically switched to sleep mode.

She got up shakily, turned off the lights, and climbed up the stairs.

She hadn’t noticed the amount of time that had passed. The master bedroom was already dark, with one of the bathroom lights still on and a slight crack left in the door; just enough illumination to navigate by without disturbing a sleeper. As had become their habit from long years of experience, whenever one of them was caught up in some project, the other would let them work undisturbed, and would go to sleep first so that they could make breakfast for them both first thing in the morning.

Lora went through her nightly routine by rote; was barely conscious of what she did until she was slipping beneath the covers and touching Alan’s warm, solid bulk. There was a sleepy murmur when she slid even closer, pressing herself against his back, and she tried to soothe with a soft  _shhhh_  before he clumsily tucked the arm she had tried to worm around him into a more comfortable position and then subsided.

Curled around her husband in the dark, feeling his rib cage expand and settle, Lora tried not to think about a younger Alan with something else’s code scattered through his DNA. In the end, all she succeeded in doing was redirecting her morbid curiosity to what and why something had seen fit to point out the differences in the first place.


	11. A Teaser

Company executives had reserved spaces in the underground parking garage, on the first level nearest the elevators. Technically, one of those spaces belonged to Sam, but between his lack of attendance and the bike's smaller footprint, the concrete looked nearly fresh-poured. One year, in between pranking seasons, Sam had put the space up for rent as prime downtown parking and donated the money to some local high school club on computer programming. Encom finally caught on after a few weeks when Sam got bored and stopped screening the renters as rigorously, and someone scraped a neighboring Bentley's doors trying to squeeze a pimped out truck into the space. 

Now it was a simple, sleek Mercedes that he pulled up next to. Kicking the stand down and killing the motor, he tugged his helmet off and ruffled his hair back into place as he glanced at the smoky windows. The interior, with its leather detailing, looked as clean and impersonal as a high-end car service. 

"Ah, here for the night shift, Mr. Flynn?" 

Sam started, turning just in time to see a man step out of the elevator. Dressed in an immaculate gray suit, the fellow looked to be about Alan's age, short and portly, with a wholly unprepossessing air. If it wasn't for the obviously cultivated air of blandness and the quality of his tailoring and leather briefcase, Sam might have been tempted to think he was the Mercedes' chauffeur. But then, he also knew the man, by face if not by acquaintance. "Mr. Drapemann," he managed to dredge the name up from memory after swinging off his bike. "Done at the office already?" 

Johnathon Drapemann was one of the boardmembers of Encom, nominated a few years after Alan. Other than that, though, Sam could recall little else about him. "If by 'done already'," the man said, making a show of checking his Rolex as he walked past, "you mean 6:30 pm, then yes, I am done already. I do believe my wife has my favorite pot roast in the oven waiting for me." 

Except, of course, that the man was apparently everything that Sam hated about the corporation. "Must be nice, getting to kick the feet up and having someone else do the work after hours," Sam returned cheerfully as he stuffed his helmet into his backpack and swung it over a shoulder. 

"Indeed, especially after having put in more than a _full_ day's work. Please try not to break anything that will get me called back in." 

Sam froze. 

_You have to want this, Sam,_ Alan had said. _Because this won't work unless you can get their approval, and you can't get that unless you_ want _it. I've known you all your life, and God help anyone that gets in your way when you've got your mind made up, but nothing can budge you either if you aren't committed - and this will be hard. Maybe this will be the hardest thing you've ever done in your life._

Sam had laughed, the Grid's neon lines still bright in his mind and his father's two faces looking at him from opposite sides of his living room; thinking, _I've already done the hard parts._ He had told Alan, _Don't worry, I've got this._

But there was also the inevitable, and Sam only managed to count to four beneath his breath before turning around with a too-wide smile. "What, they didn't teach 'Ra ra, team support!' in your prep schools? Don't worry, Mr. Drapemann, I'll do my best to make sure you don't have to come back." 

The man paused in turn before taking the time to pull open the driver's door and set his briefcase down. Facing Sam, he slid his hands into his pants pockets, expression flat. "'Team support'? Is that what they're calling what you do these days?" 

Sam let his smile stiffen to match the mood. "Hey, I'm here, aren't I? I'm just as invested in this as you - " 

"Please," Drapemann scowled, raking a hard look over Sam's attire. "Just because you've started trying to dress the part does not suddenly make you a team player." 

"I'm _being_ the team player now, if you'd bothered to look past the clothes," Sam pushed out through gritted teeth. 

The man's head dipped, eyes narrowed to derisive slits. "Ah, by strolling in the day after your biggest stunt yet - which, by the way, is going to cost the company _hundreds of millions_ \- and strong-arming us into placing Encom's reputation and future on a mystery product by a college drop-out with no real-world experience?" 

"Strong-arming?" Sam scoffed - and had to bite his tongue against harsher accusations. This war of words where he actually had to _care_ about what remained of his reputation afterward was new, and he hated how defensive it made him feel. "The board could have voted the proposal out. Mackey could have vetoed it. It's not like I blackmailed you all. And I think there's been plenty of examples of college drop-outs taking world-wide mega-corporations to the top - " 

"Men with business savvy and a focus on creating success; men who dropped out of school to concentrate on _building_ something!" Drapemann abruptly snapped, sharply enough that his words echoed hollow in the back of the garage. "Forgive me, but simply _handing_ our crown jewel over to the masses on a _whim_ is hardly going to convince me you are one of - " 

"It wasn't a _whim_ ..." 

" - not a popularity contest, Flynn, where cheers from the freedom movement will keep employees employed. Right now, the only thing that helped carry this ridiculous motion through is Bradley - " 

"Who has been with Encom the longest, he's been here from the _beginning_. You'd think you'd trust _his_ judgment at least - " 

"And his judgment is the _only_ reason why I voted _yes!_ " Drapemann hissed with a stab of a finger at Sam's chest. 

" - and the decision's ... already ... " Sam stuttered and blinked, forced back on his heels more by surprise than by the physical intrusion as his hindbrain finally processed the man's words. "Wait. What? You voted yes?" He laughed, too-short and over-bright. "Then what the hell's with the third degree?" 

Drapemann resettled his jacket with a sharp, sour motion. "I voted yes to _Bradley_ , not to you. Do try to keep that in mind. If you fail now, it will mean pay-cuts, it will mean layoffs - " an arch look as the man finally slid into his car, " - it will mean the end of your godfather's career. Quite frankly, Mr. Flynn, if I were you, I'd stay with the denim and leather if it means you're spending your every waking second on making this miracle happen. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a pot roast waiting for me." 

If it had been ten days ago, as the Mercedes purred to life and pulled smoothly out into the aisle, Sam might have muttered, _hope you choke on it,_ beneath his breath. But it had been ten days and too many lifetimes to count in between, and now he could only frown moodily after the fading tail lights and ponder how many other members of the board he did or didn't know. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My fellow readers, thank you all for your patience and continued to support. You seriously are the best. :) 
> 
> I have had all of life fall on me this past year, and am only just beginning to get my creative feels back online. I hate to admit that I've strayed a bit from the Tron fandom, but never fear, I'm going to use the jump-start to keep wittling away at The Sea! And so, I wanted to at least post a little teaser (though I'm nowhere near done with the chapter yet) to let you know that I AM thinking about The Sea and where it's going, even if I've had to get some other creative feels off my chest in the meantime. <3


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